Though many, including myself, prefer to use multiple partitions, for a new-comer like yourself, only using 1 partition would be advisable. Since you stated that you were switching from Vista to...

>well it's true.

That doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing argument.

>If you want video editing out of the box, i've heard that ubuntustudio is just for this case...also keep in mind that if you pick ubuntu{any flavor} you will have the support of the largest...

Microsoft office is the only microsoft product that I actually like, much superior to open office... Regardless I hate word processors.... latex is better ;-) (and it looks better)