Kick the Microsoft habit in 12 steps

Do you know you want to beat your Microsoft addiction but don't know where to start?

Well, there is a new book with all the answers: "Just say no to Microsoft: How to ditch Microsoft and why it's not as hard as you think."

The tome begins with the most obvious of tips--Get a Mac--but moves on to offer suggestions on how to run a standard PC using operating systems, media software, browsers, office suites and all other manner of technology that Bill Gates and Co. had nothing to do with.

The book's author, Tony Bove, even offers a 12-step approach for those who know they have a Microsoft problem. Step one is to "admit that you are powerless over your addiction--and that your computer system and software have become unmanageable."

And the book practices what it preaches. It was written in OpenOffice.org and laid out using Adobe's FrameMaker. (But was that a Linux box?)

Bove is going to be speaking Sunday at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, Calif. The event's organizers initially had trouble lining up a pro-Microsoft speaker, though apparently they now have three lined up.