The way I do it is to run VirtualBox on Windows and then install Ubuntu as a virtual machine. As long as you install the Guest Additions and enable 3D graphics, everything works reasonably well – a bit more sluggish than on real hardware, but not too much so.
If you are running Windows 7, I can also recommend using Ubuntu 12.04 with the Wubi installer. Unfortunately, I have had bad luck running Wubi on Windows XP.
Finally, you can dual boot your machine. The first thing you would need to do is repartition your hard disk so you have a place to install Ubuntu. I might write an article on this. I do run Ubuntu 13.04 this way. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it installs GRUB as the boot manager and … well, Grub is an ugly looking boot manager.
Thanks for your question.

Thank you for the positive feedback. I am always open to suggestions for new topics.

You’re very welcome.
I ask myself the very same question about Canonical – they are just shooting themselves in the foot by forcing Unity without even the slightest explanation.
I think they should have had a little tutorial script that popped up little messages to help you get to know Unity. I know KDE does a bit of this for their Plasma interface.
Thanks for the feedback.

While I’ve experienced some crashed with 12.04, I am never sure if it is the core system itself or all the software I keep installing / uninstalling as I try things out.
Certainly it is more stable than the first alpha versions which would just crash on their own – even when I was doing nothing.
I am not sure which branch Canonical is taking their source from, and how much putting Unity over GNOME is affecting stability.
Hopefully it will stabilize quite quickly – Ubuntu 11.10 has some serious issues when first released, but Canonical quickly fixed many of them.

Thank you for the feedback.
There will be a more advance tutorial coming. Once you get the basics, then there are a number of tricks to help you move along a lot faster.
For example: in Dash, when you type the name of an application, (1) you do not have to type the whole name – just enough so it is the first option, (2) you do not have to navigate to the first application (either with keyboard or mouse) to launch it, you just need to hit the Enter key and it will launch.
For example, I frequently use the basic editor gedit. I access it by typing ed into Dash and then hitting Enter and it launches.