plonq | Convince me

At risk of starting a flame war in my user comments I have shut off all screening.

In the past year or so I have had more than one person try and convince me that I would be better off running Linux as my primary operating system.

For the sake of argument, assume the following:

I am running a very stable Windows XP system which is completely current in all security patches and updates. I am behind a hardware router/firewall, and am also running a current software firewall/anti-virus program.

I sometimes work from home and I need full compatibility with our MS Office suite (including complex spreadsheets and databases). I also need full compatibility with our Exchange 2003 servers, and our other web-based applications. My primary browser is Firefox (which I forgo in favour of IE when I need to access our Exchange servers because Firefox chokes on some of the features).

When I am not working, and not downloading ~~porn~~ stuff, I spend my time playing online games like Neverwinter Nights, and various Half-Life mods.

Your task - should you choose to accept it - is to convince me that I would be better off running Linux, or some variant thereof. What would be my net benefit?

Assume that I am pragmatic enough that, if convinced that I would benefit from the switch, I would seriously consider doing so (maybe the latest SUSE) on my next hard drive upgrade -- which, given that I am running near capacity on my current one - should be comparatively soon.

Also note that "with a modest amount of work you can do everything you do now" is not a compelling argument because that's just change for the sake of change with no net benefit.

The floor is now yours.