How much are you paying?
If you have a crap connection I would say that would reduce the usability of Linux - my life is made a hell of a lot better by
URPMI which provides you with all the software you'll ever need and makes dependency problems a thing of the past. Be aware that Mandrake won't include licensed stuff, like divx codecs for example so a little downloading might be essential at the start.
But Mandrake 10.1 is the distro for me: the only one to successfully detect my forward and back mouse buttons. The installation is an absolute breeze too - M$ should take note of how it should be done.