michael> Kelley, I use voice recognition, a pen-scanner, a program
michael> that indexes text, and most of all I use a DOS outliner.
There's voice recog stuff on Linux (though it's unlikely to be as integrated with as many core applications as it probably is on Windows), there is a voice recognition package for Emacs (which is the editor that includes email and many other core tools), I think Dragon has Linux code, and I think IBM has released VR stuff for Linux.
Depending on the model and the interface, there's probably a driver for the pen-scanner; if it's USB, chances are pretty good. The new 2.4 Linux kernel has improved support for USB devices.
Programs that index text are *free and plentiful*; I can think of 2 very good ones, one excellent one, and one very interesting one (that integrates into Emacs and continually searches your "textbase" in the background, finding matches to whatever is displayed in the current buffer; so if I were running it right now, it might be finding other places in my textbase where plain text indexers had been discussed).
There are a few standalone outliners (most of which seem immature); but I just use the very excellent outliner mode of Emacs.
So, most of that stuff is covered, in some way or another.
The trick is that it will take longer than a week to install and learn all this and the rest of it. It's harder for some kinds of Windows power users to switch over to Linux than it is "newbies", ironically.
If you're serious, Michael, I'd try to find or cultivate a friendship with someone in the CS dep't at Chico, then find a CS student you could pay a small sum (say, $100), or otherwise give some academic service to, in exchange for her or his help setting up a Linux box for you.
Best, Kendall Clark