Use VMWare Player or VMWare GSX Server - Both available as free downloads from vmware.com. The former will let you run pre-built Virtual Machines ad the latter will let you build your own. Create or load a virtual machine within your windows PC and run Linux in that to find out if you like it or not. If you don't like what you see just blow the VM's away. VMWare itself does have one or two driver issues though so if you like Linux I would recommend installing it instead of Windows - It will do all the stuff mentioned (and much more) but not by the names mentioned (MS Word, Excel etc.)
- Dave-