You had a better time than me, Linux refused to boot my laptop with the power supply plugged in initially on.

I really don't get the speed comparison thing though, I see it a lot "omg, I installed linux and it is so fast" ... unless you had an infested, startup trash happy Windows install I never see a difference.

Linux is lovely but it is a time consuming system to get running and polished. I work supporting linux servers and they can be just as much of a pain as Windows machines... with the exception that restarting them generally fixes nothing, its always more serious.