MS Office still remains the key issue when trying to get a person to switch to Linux. In our case, Outlook on Win8 is the mother ship for everybody's email, calendar, contacts, etc.

But I hadn't thought of doing a VM Ubuntu thing--I've never run VM before.

So I'm sure: you have shared files between a Win7 public folder and N810? If so, perhaps an investment into a downgrade would solve many problems.

Thanks for the tips,
Jake