The point of dual-booting would be that you could actually find out what does and does not work and how well you can deal with the things that don’t work (and you can gradually work on improving what you can do in Linux without taking a huge risk). There will always be things that work in Windows but do not work in Linux because they are different systems; the reverse is also true. If you already know you can’t live without a software/hardware combination that you already know you can’t run in Linux, there may be no point in trying it.

At the same time, if you really think of Windows as a superset of Linux (Windows does everything you want, and Linux only does some of the things you want), you’re probably better off staying with Windows. It’s not that much more expensive, and if you look hard enough you can usually find free, quality software on that platform (portableapps.com and software comparison lists on Wikipedia are good for that).

I dual-boot and use Linux most of the time because there are many features I like that are on Linux but not Windows, and booting into Windows prevents me from using them effectively (I do rely on Wine and VirtualBox on occasion). I don’t know many people who get away with not having a copy of Windows at all so I don’t think saving money is a reasonable goal here. You should only want to switch to Linux if you think it’s better.

Alex, I see your point, and would love to help you, but I can’t. The thing is, everytime I hear complains like yours (“I wish I had this program for Linux”) I think that this is a reason NOT to use WINDOWS. Why? Because it’s the monopoly of MS that provokes the effect of having Windows-only programs (or Windows and Mac-only).