My Dell Inspiron 14 ran away from Windows 7 six months ago. will never go back, and settled in with Xubuntu 12 which in "my" opinion is the easiest distro for either Mac or Windows laptop users to master. For the rare instances I need to run Windows only apps or Microsoft Office, I have XP & Office installed in a Virtual box that runs like a Champ! I also have an Asus eee Pc 900 SSD netbook that dual boots XP & Puppy Linux 5.2 (another easy to learn distro) that can be installed and will boot from a usb or in my case an SD card.
I have Windows, Mac and Linux laptops & desktops.