Could this be the best of both worlds?
Best of Both Worlds
On the left we have kubuntu running under vmware player on Windows Vista. To the right we have Outlook and some Vista widgets running on the Vista host.
Vmware player is incredibly solid and linux installs nicely unlike Microsoft Virtual PC which runs into various problems (which Microsoft aren't rushing to fix). Vmware player is free and I prefer it to Vmware server as I don't need the 'server' element. It's missing features like pause/rewind/snapshot so it is less useful for testing setup programs (cannot roll back to a clean o/s install) but is ok if all you want is a simple desktop os. It supports USB, unlike the free versions of VirtualBox.
I found a site called Easy VMX that allows me to make new virtual machines for vmware player so I can build whatever vm's I like.
Somehow (not sure how) the seamless mouse thing works and I can switch between kubuntu and windows just be moving the mouse. Unfortunately cut and paste between them does not seem to be working.
So why use Vista as the host? Because I'd need another license to run it in a vm on a linux host 
I'm giving kubuntu/KDE a try. Compared to gnome it is either more suited to the power user or more bloated, depending on your viewpoint. I think I'm leaning to krusader as a file manager, I could probably run it under gnome but it costs nothing to try KDE.
TBH there's something about the gnome philosophy of cloning windows that irritates me. KDE may have once used 'non free' software but I don't really care.
Good to see the blog works in Konquerer and the text editor has a spell checker! Ironically Konquerer is flagged in red.
Peter's Moblog
I've used both KDE and Gnome, and for me, i find gnome hinders me and gets in the way when i need to get my work done, whereas KDE lets me work quicker. But.. that's just me, certainly, try both and see which you like.. Oh, and don't forget to install Amarok :P