RISC OS is a different operating system to Windows. Because the operating system is stored on ROM modules rather than installed like Windows it boots much faster and as far as I know doesn't do that pesky bsod - bluescreen of death. The software isn't compatible with Windows but neither is it anywhere near as bloaty so you don't need so much space. To explain that further... RISC OS !Publisher - yes the ! is meant to be there - uses around 796kb of memory... the Windows equivalent doing the same thing uses multiple amounts of megabytes. That's a bit like say driving from point A to point B. The Windows way would be to take the scenic route adding more mileage, bells and whistles eg stopping at a theme park and generally using more petrol on the way. The RISC OS way would take the direct route from point A to point B and using less petrol/time on it's journey. Yet, the end result is the same. Both vehicles would finish up at point B. In the same way both RISC OS and Windows if connected to the internet will allow you to do much the same things. Browse, send/receive email, ICQ, etc.
I use both and to be fair, based on the version of RISC OS that I have Windows is better at many things. Sometimes, if I need to save memory on the PC and want to listen to MP3s I can play the MP3 files on the PC using the RISC OS so it is the RISC OS memory doing the work. This is done by file sharing.
.... and by now I have probably confuzzled you more than ever
