please don't think that you need to use VC++ to code in C++ on windows. MingW has ported GCC to windows, so as long as you have standards-compliant code, it'll run fine. if you're just starting out, it doesn't really matter which OS you use, but for more real-life programming, you're going to have to learn a little OS-specific code. I'd say this mostly is determined by your job though.

note: the MingW port of GCC can be found in Dev-C++