can't download anything-this is the worst system I have ever seen!

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs. For help on reporting bugs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#When%20not%20to%20file%20a%20bug.

Much of the software you download from the internet is likely designed for Windows. However, there is a vast see of free, open source software available for Ubuntu that can be dowloaded very easily from the Ubuntu repositories and various other locations online.

If you have something specific software you are looking for, someone here can help you find an free-software equivalent.

Also, you may want to take a look at the documentation found here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/9.04/add-applications/C/index.html

-- Sorry if this gets posted twice, my internet connection is a bit unreliable right now. At least I got a chance to fix some typos --

Much of the software you download from the internet is likely designed for Windows. However, there is a vast sea of free, open source software available for Ubuntu that can be downloaded very easily from the Ubuntu repositories and various other locations online.

If you have something specific software you are looking for, someone here can help you find an free-software equivalent.

Also, you may want to take a look at the documentation found here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/9.04/add-applications/C/index.html

You'll find that Ubuntu already has a lot of different programs already installed. Try hunting around the menus in the top taskbar, particularly the "Applications" menu. Also try going up to the top taskbar and click on

Applications - Add/Remove Applications

anything already ticked is what you already have on the system. If you want to add anything then just tick it and click "Apply"
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)