So on another note, I guess I finally got tired of windows, and I've been using ubuntu for the last few days now...

It's so refreshing to not have to be bothered by stupid firewall notices and antivirus popups every 5 minutes, and not have to wait for ages just to boot the computer... a lot of people seem to dislike the unity desktop but I kind of like it. I already compiled gimp 2.8 RC1 and it works better than the windows version. Colour management is still wonky but otherwise it works better - the chunky panning effect is gone, for one thing.

I really don't even see any reason to boot to windows anymore...

Good news dd. The only reason I don't like the unity desktop is because those buttons look too big and plastic to me. I prefer not to have buttons or icons because they look untidy. It's just a matter of taste.

Unity is not really a desktop. It is a Shell for GNOME desktop. Anyway you can use GNOME Classic or GNOME 3 on Ubuntu.
If you want all the benefits of Ubuntu, but you will not use GNOME, you can try Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu.
I recommend try with KDE 4 (Kubuntu or other KDE distro), and you spend some time in learning to use it. KDE is highly configurable.
If you try Kubuntu, download 12.04 beta (daily) version:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/

You can adjust the size of the buttons in unity. I also set them a bit smaller than default, looks much nicer.

Well I just lost all of the post I had, which was around half a page in a word doc. Oh well.

You've never tried stuff like VMware or even a VirtualBox.

Now, IMHO dual-boot systems are useful only when several persons use the same hardware but want different OS, or for very unfrequent and specific work. Keeping both systems in sync for regular stuff (navigator profiles, mail...) is to much of a hassle.