It's most of a day later, so I assume you're done downloading and tried to install it? I've never installed Ubuntu from scratch, but I've used it on servers in the cloud...this one, I'm pretty sure...so I don't know how it installs firsthand, but in general most Linuxes offer to set up dual boot for you. Which is a win-win in that you keep your Windows installation undisturbed, and then you move things across in an orderly way. To answer a question downthread, I'd recommend dual-boot rather than erase-n-replace, if it's not too late.

Email's really no different under Linux. Fair number of email clients available for Linux--true of all the basic stuff. I use Mozilla Thunderbird under Windows (I believe it's the old Eudora program), and it's available for Linux. T-Bird's a nice reliable, if unglamorous, workhorse.

Ubuntu probably comes with the FireFox Web browser. One drawback is that they recently dropped Flash support, which pisses me off a bit. I found that Google Chrome installed without a hitch under Linux, and that's what I use on my Linux home system. It still supports Flash, so I'm able to keep watching Amazon videos on my living room Linux box.

Speaking of which, the place where I've had the most aggravation with Linux is in the area of media. Linux and DRM (digital rights management, aka copy protection) have been enemies ever since DVD encryption was cracked so that Linux users could play DVDs, and so major vendors of licensed media players have boycotted Linux. Linux users have to jump through hoops to do things with media that Windows and Mac users take for granted.

If you need to play video, I'd recommend installing the VLC media player. It's probably available as an Ubuntu package; see if the command line incantation "yum install vlc" brings satisfaction. VLC is a Swiss-Army knife video tool--it also translates and reformats video as well as playing it. The Ubuntu package probably includes the hacks to enable it to play DVDs and BluRay, but sometimes that's a bit dicey and you'll need to go searching for grey-market add-ons.

BTW, what kind of add-ons did you pay $2 apiece for? I'm a little surprised, since there's so much open-source and public domain Linux software. Most of the time getting new software is just a matter of typing that little "yum install ..." prayer at the command line. Where did you download it? If from the Ubuntu project itself, probably they're doing a little fundraising, and I wouldn't begrudge them a few bucks. But if from somebody else, watch out for people trying to gouge unnecessary fees from the unsuspecting. Question why you should ever pay for anything Linux.

So how about a status report, bowser?