I barely try out many gadgets these days for two reasons. One is the amount of new software/hardware grows exponentially, it is hard to justify which one I should try. The second reason is that I don't have much time to do that either. Following the breakdown of my laptop, I ordered a new Ubuntu Linux DVD for it because it is free anyway and it saves my downloading time.
Surprisingly, this Ubuntu is very user friendly, starting from the installation. There is almost no efforts necessary to customize the Linux before you are capable of doing most of the tasks. Another surprise is that open office is quite stable. It doesn't leak memory and it can even understand the tracking changes from Microsoft Word. One of the nicest feature of Ubuntu is the software installation process. Almost all the packages can be installed using a simple apt-get command inherited from debian. This process automatically smoothed many package dependency frustrations for customs.
I highly recommend Ubuntu Linux to you if you are undecided yet.
