Working around IT i've always heard about Linux but have never actually tried it - but my old Lenovo N100 laptop takes 20 minutes to boot winXP, can't install win7 and is, for lack of a better definition, a useless hunk-a-junk so i figured, why not?
Right?

Well.
I gave Linux a tour and liked what i saw. It boots fast, it looks good, there's a lot of out of the box functionality...
So i installed and have been using it for 24 hours - and so far it feels more like a half-ported android in high resolution then an OS.

I remember being promised centralized account syncage. Impeccable stability. Customization beyond anything i've seen.
So far, it took 30 minutes to get thunderbird to recognize my gmail account and now it only syncs messages i haven't read on my mobile phone - not to mention that i don't understand why i have to register my account in the OS just so that i'd have to reregister it in the mail app.

another 30 minutes to set up the time and date because the time zones are all wrong, the +/- keys only work for minutes and if you close the window before you exit the textbox it won't save the values.

the language settings crashed on me twice trying to add a language, the OS manufactured a faux PS/2 mouse i had to disable via terminal on a computer that doesn't even have a darned PS/2 connection and i spent a long while looking for MyUnity only to discover it doesn't exist.

Chrome didn't install right but showed up when i rebooted. 'Show desktop' doesn't work no matter what. All cursors apart for the standard arrow are absolutely HUGE -
But hey, it sure does boot fast.


Anyway, now that my bitching and whining is all done, what am i missing?
My user experience so far is more akin to an alpha build from a college student than a full blown product and if that were the case i wouldn't have heard so much about Linux. What gives?
Is it the Unity GUI? is 12.10 just a glitchy build?
Is linux just not up to par anymore for the average user, with win7 out?