For a standard home or development desktop, it's really not an issue or a choice. Linux is the best.

Like others noted in this thread, if video editing is needed, you likely have a Mac or Windows installed.

For work, it's Outlook. It's the killer app at work for those places Exchange is the standard.

If you don't buy a laptop from System76, you are in for a surprise. Out of the box, synaptic touchpads and separated graphics cards really don't work at all. The touchpad is way too fickle and battery life is awful using the more powerful GPU by default. Configuring or switching the GPU is extremely painful (restart X server!?). On Windows, it's seamless.

I've noticed a couple different things:

1) It makes me a lot more selective about putting things on the taskbar and desktop.
    a) I put things I really do use out there, so things are highly geared to my workflow
    b) Things I find I'm not using get punted
2) The windows button finally has purpose. You can hit that button, start typing an app name and then space/enter to launch. I find I'm mousing less actually.

In addition, Windows 8 hasn't come with the alternating-release-something-new instability problems we've gotten used to. It's every bit as solid as 7 and has better integrated security features. Win, win in my book.

They replaced metal interconnects with light? Yawn. Wake me up when we hit wormholes.

And if you want to call it "surfboard", I'll let you! I mean c'mon, if you want to look really cool on a Wave, you have to have a surfboard!

Patents on ideas that are only worth $50k to their owners in terms of future revenue are part of the problem too. If your idea is worth $1M, then $250K is easy to get from investors, banks, etc. It could also serve to reverse the order of operations, instead of speculatively filing every idea, novel or not, you could put your idea into practice and if it is evident the idea will be worth it, then the patent could be filed. If another were to file the patent, you could claim prior art. An extension to the amount of time after disclosure it could be filed might also be worth considering. However, this wasn't meant to be an extended exchange, merely a provocative thought.