XP Pro started giving me grief on my laptop with a blue screen every time I booted it up, which seemed to relate to the wireless card. So to fix the problem I installed Ubuntu Linux, problem solved!
Installation is text based, and I found that was the only thing that was a little flaky. The first time I installed, it ended in an error. Rather than trying to fix this error (relating to packages) I opted to restart the install from scratch. This time it worked flawlessly. I was able to configure my wireless set-up during install and there were no issues with the connection at all.
It's the first time I've really used Gnome - I always opted for KDE in the past, but I like it a lot. Firefox is installed as standard so all I had to put on there was Thunderbird and I was away.
I found that Mplayer couldn't play Mp3 streams, until I installed the Gstreamer0.8-plugins. (involved enabling the Universe repository and performing an "apt-get update" first.) I'm guessing the reason for that is to do with licensing issues?
RDP connections to my windows desktop work fine as expected, and connecting to any other Linux box is a snap.
I have to mention that I found out about Ubuntu through the LugRadio Podcast and I can see why they are always plugging Ubuntu, it's top notch distro.