I've been mislead. While having working drivers, a larger selection of software, and a working audio subsystem are all things that I've been dreaming of, Windows isn't exactly all that the world promises it will be. For your standard, day-to-day, office-type use, it works just fine: email, document editing, web surfing, etc. It even handles playing music and video without issue. But, other than some issues with certain proprietary video codecs, Linux does all of this just as well. The real differences come into play beyond this basic usage pattern: audio / video / photo editing, server software, programming, organization, etc.
A large portion of the free (as in beer, speech, or sex) software that is decent is also available for Linux. Notable exceptions include the Flickr Photo Uploader, Google Talk, Picasa, QCD, and a few others.
The free software that isn't also available for Linux is largely abandoned or buggy or both. Even those that aren't abandoned have terrible, cluttered, websites that are quite difficult to navigate. There is little to no community support for these applications.
Even most of the non-free software has odd bugs and terrible interfaces.
Another big issue I have with Windows right now is the culture and mentality around it. If you want to see my point, pull up "MSN Messenger":http://messenger.msn.com/ side by side with "Gaim":http://gaim.sf.net/ and take a look at the interfaces. You'll notice that MSN Messenger is cluttered with "features", advertisement and other unneeded interface items.
So, unless you're willing to pay for expensive (and often buggy) software ($700 for Adobe Photoshop, for instance), or pirate that same software, the only real difference between the two is the operating system/core functionality itself. For me, that's a toss up.
Windows has a bit more spit and polish around every corner. Hardware often, but not always, works better, not because of Windows itself, but because of popular support. Applications mostly share a similar look and feel. Most applications integrate reasonably well with one another. However, along with this spit and polished exterior comes a terribly ugly and disorganized mess inside. Because of this, tweaking with the internals of Windows is not for the faint hearted. Often, if something gets "broken", a user is more likely to reinstall than he/she is to find a solution to the problem.
With Linux, everything isn't always as easy as it could be but, but, the amount of power and control you have over what it is capable of often more than not makes up for the spit and polish in Windows. For the very basic of tasks, I feel that both are equally suited. So, for anything beyond that, personal preference and the specific task at hand is going to play a larger role than anything.
Only time will tell which choice I end up making. I'm keeping a list of the things I love and hate about each. Maybe you should do the same. If anything, it'll give both parties an idea of what to fix and what to add.
