I have used most flavors of windows over the years and have truly liked Win 7. I keep it clean and protected and have never had any significant issues. I have also always kept a second machine for playing with lots of Linux versions. I liked the idea of Unity for wide screen monitors. The left hand application bar maximizes the screen real estate for most applications. I installed 12.04 on my test machine which is an Atom mini-itx with 2 GB memory and Intel graphics. This is the first OS that feels snappy on that system. The changes in Unity are a huge upgrade. I have set myself a goal of using only Ubuntu as much as possible for a month. I haven't had to go back to the Windows box since I started and now plan to use Ubuntu exclusively, especially since I love the low power use, quiet (fanless), all-in one style box i have created.