If you are frustrated with any version of Windows you are running or are
tired of rebooting your machine frequently or are fed up with the
antivirus and security crap or are tired for paying for all of this
software or find that Windows Genuine Disadvantage is a nuisance you
might want to consider a dual boot machine for a while.

You can dual boot any of the Linux distros fairly easy.  Ubuntu is the
easiest to use.  That is what I did.  Soon after I found that going to
Windows was very infrequent.  The only time I now use Windows is if I do
some application development or maybe for some way out photo editing to
do some way out task.

Even before I know that Linux was a better OS but after using it I am
finding out how much better.

Still there are issues.  You need to be careful when adding certain
hardware because the hardware makers are not supporting Linux.  You, in
some cases need to hunt up drivers for some printers and with others do
not get all of the features.  This depends on the printer and the
model.  Hp is the most widely supported.  My HP was not problem.

Gimp is another application that has a lot of printing quirks.  But the
new version of Gimp is even more quireky when printing under Windows
than it is under Linux.

Basically one will find once they iron out a few bumps is that they can
just about do all of the same things under Linux for free that they did
under Windows while feeding Bill Gates and his friends.  You will find
not issues with the stupid registry because there is not one.  Yes, you
will miss a lot of standardization that came with Windows but I do
expect this will come as Linux matures.

You really have nothing to loose.  You can even download a Live CD and
boot Ubuntu and other distros from the CD and run (slower of course) the
OS to get some idea of what it is.  From this live CD you can sample a
full version of Open Office and surf the internet with Firefox and if
you like it you can install a dual boot setup from  the Live CD.