I just purchased the January edition of Linux Ubuntu and using the new 64 and 32 Bit installation disk : I had the following problems.
1. the formatting of the disk took over three hours to complete.
2. the installation continually froze at the Ubuntu one section, I eventually had to bypass that section completely.
3 24 hours later after I finally got it installed it said all done reboot your computer and all I got was a blank screen.
4 I rebooted again and this time my old reboot screen with WIN 7 OS's resurfaced and no sign of my new Ubuntu.
5 Oh! It's installed to its own hard drive as found out by using Easus partition master, but No way I can get it to boot. I deleted the partition and did three more installations and no success. so deleted them and tried my WIN 7 install disk .. Guess what, 100% straight install no problems to the same hard drive in less than 35 minutes.

Really! This is why people pay and use Windows and Ubuntu is given away free. I had the same problems when I tried the Ubuntu V12.04 Disk.

When Oh When is this Canonical mob going to get their act together and come up with a System that has all it's install wizards working perfectly and can at least match Windows for Consumer and user friendly product?

I keep reading about how wonderful Ubuntu is but Honestly, for the average computer user this whole Linux is "great" debate is just a joke.

1. Ubuntu != Linux. If Ubuntu is not working for you that does not mean that Linux does now work for you. Try one of the other consumer friendly distributions, like Mint, openSuse or PCLinuxOS.
2. Nope, that is because Windows is a proprietary OS produced by Microsoft to make money for them, while Ubuntu is an open source OS produced by Canonical that is a platform for them them to sell their services. It is purely a different business model and has nothing to do with quality. Some of the OSes with the highest quality you can get, like Debian, Slackware, CentOS, Scientific Linux or the BSD family, are available for free.

plese note that dual boot is advanced setup for a new user, grab a computer with working disk, do the autmatically partitioning and you should have ubuntu running in an hour.