As some of you have pointed out to me via e-mail, it's been a while since I last posted an editorial column. This is for several reasons:

1) I was lazing around on the beach for much of summer, as a 'career break'. Seriously.

2) I've been working hard for my final Open University Psychology exam, which was on Wednesday.

3) I couldn't think of anything to rant about.

Number 3 is still with me, but without the support of 1 and 2 it's not enough of an excuse. So here goes...

In fact it's not quite true that I can't think of anything to rant about. Several IT-related things have annoyed me recently, starting with the fact that I can't seem to buy a decent LCD monitor. I've tried, but the ones I bought had faults of varying types, ranging from noisy backlight regulators to inconsistent brightness levels. Maybe the sea air affects the circuitry somehow, but after several abortive attempts I'm back with an old 15-inch display that I've had for six years.

I know there are good LCD monitors out there, because we've reviewed some on this site, but the models I buy personally are never quite good enough. What are your experiences? Please let us know, especially if you're old enough to remember what decent CRT screens were like.

Another thing that annoys me is idiots who, four days before a major exam, decide that it would be a good idea to repartition their hard drive to install Linux using an ageing piece of partitioning software, resulting in total data loss. Luckily, said idiot is not so idiotic when it comes to making backups, so nothing was permanently lost. Note to self; d'oh.

But some things have quite definitely not annoyed me. In particular, I've rediscovered the joys of svelte software. After years of using (admittedly user-friendly) bloatware, I've found a couple of Linux distros that consume a mere 50MB each, will boot from CD (or even USB drive) without leaving anything on your hard drive, and contain pretty much all the applications and tools you'd need for a home office or small office PC.

I'm torn between the two of them at the moment (hence the partitioning fiasco), so I recommend you give them both a try, particularly if you have an older PC that's struggling with newer software. Damn Small Linux is one, Puppy Linux is the other.

They're very useful for bringing old machines back to life, for introducing you to the wonders of Linux and for reminding you how pleasurable computing can be. And no, you don't have to partition your hard drive in order to use them.