EDIT: hey nerds, tell me what this does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube, because I have one.
IT'S CUTE.
It's described as a "server appliance," which I believe is sort of like a server without the hassle and drudge-work -- you tell it what you want it to run, do some quick configuration work, and it does it.
The 'linux is very hard to use, or so i hear' argument is becoming increasingly irrelevant. There are also several window managers and desktop-environment tweaks to get things looking and working exactly like windows.
The real issue that Linux still has is that no matter how much window dressing you throw on it you'll still run into problems when people try to install things that aren't in their distro. For someone like you or me, doing "./configure && make && sudo make install" is simple, but not for everyone. Debian and its derivatives still have their share of dependency hell issues, especially when dealing with third-party repositories and the like. You should have seen the absolute hell I went through when I made the mistake of adding an unstable apt source on my laptop when I tried putting Debian back on it a few days ago (before quickly rushing back to the sanity of Gentoo...should have known better than to try to go bleeding edge on Debian, of all distros).
Linux works great when you get it working, the issues that many would-be Linux users typically involve doing things that their distro doesn't directly support. When you get to that point, things tend to just go into a downwards spiral because there's very little in the *nix world that's consistent across even the same base product.
One of the biggest advantages of Windows is that you can just sit down in front of a system and be able to easily use it. While there have been some changes since Windows 95 came out, all of the versions from Windows 95 to XP all handle basically the same. With *nix, you might use KDE while your friend uses GNOME while his friend uses Enlightenment while his girlfriend uses Xfce while her mum uses WindowMaker while her Solaris-using husband clings to his old-school CDE desktop and his dog has Fluxbox installed in his food dish. While KDE and GNOME share a lot of similarities (I find that going from one to the other is about as significant of a change as going from Windows to Mac OS -- different, but similar), many of the other environments use wildly different design principals from the next and, taking that idea one step further, many of them are so customizable that, despite the fact that you might be going from one Fluxbox-powered setup to the next, it's going to look, feel, and behave a lot differently.
It's both good and bad -- good because you can have your computer do what you want it to do, bad because there is no consistency and, in many cases, far too many options for your average Joe to wrap their head around.
msie6 runs superbly in wine
So does Office 2003...heh.
and doesn't drag everything else around it into a pit of crash when you try to do something nasty like WGA.
Honestly, I don't recall ever having IE crash in recent history. It has a long way to go before it's standards compliant, but it isn't all that crash-happy in my experience (and, seeing as I've had to do online classes that
require the use of IE, I'd say I have a fair amount of experience with it).
As far as I can tell, most email clients (though I use web-based ones usually) are generally modelled after outlook. In under an hour you could probably pick up the basics.
It's not always that simple. One of Outlook's chief advantages is that it interoperates with the other Office applications. It's also a bit more than just an e-mail client -- it's sort of like a desktop version of Palm OS, with contacts lists, a lovely appointment calendar, to-do lists, et cetera. About the only single-application solution that I can think of that could possibly be a true substitute for it is
Evolution (I believe KDE has the same functionality, but if I remember correctly it isn't a tight, integrated interface -- they're all separate applications).
