My advice, and I use all three systems Win, Linux and Mac, is go with a dual boot of Windows 7 and Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Ubuntu is great, community based, lots of progress and exciting release schedules, but it is lacking in some areas (and it's getting easier and easier to use). Windows 7 is great also, very friendly, snappy on even lower end hardware. Dual boot and you have the best of both worlds
