Well, for starters, if you are a 'typical' home user, web browsing, email, multimedia, etc...
I might suggest Linux Mint. it is Ubuntu with more config scripts and codecs for playing video and music files out of the box. However, PCLinuxOS will give that that same experience, with a bit smaller repository (selecton of apps directly available for it)
If you want more of a "windows" fell to it, use the KDE versions.
I personally prefer Xfce then Gnome desktop Environments which are lighter and faster, but, offer somewhat fewer 'enhancements"
One thing to keep in mind about distros is, the further you stray from the commercially supported versinos ( Red Hat, CentOS, Novell, Opensuse, ubuntu and of course it's non-corporate but ever present origin Debian, the less 'guarantee' you will have of being sure your version is fully supported in the future.
The community created distros which are spinoffs and heavily customized by volunteers are really nice at times, but, volunteers can quit at any time then where will you be?
Another reason why I stick to OpenSUse, Debian and CentOS, they are mostlikely to endure.
Big Bear