I see no reason not to try both and decide where you fit in best (especially now that modern Linux distros can run virtually all Windows apps - my fav is Suse 7.3). www.demolinux.org is a great download. It is a preinstalled linux (with many feature cuts mind you) that you just boot off the CD and tada, play with it. It doesn't touch your hard drive, so no worries. Just power down, eject the CD and it is uninstalled (in no particular order ). It really just gives you a feel for Linux and Star Office, and will run slow because it is off the CD and a "hot filesystem" that doesn't use the hard drive even for swap space... and it doesn't come with Wine so you can't run Win apps [edit: I think], but it does let you play with all the other Linux habitats.
Big download, but stable. Never has cut me off midway yet.