Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Extremely user-friendly
This distribution promises you a very tailored user experience and it does deliver on that promise. The developers provide you with a custom desktop environment and a set of neat programs. And the whole desktop looks simply gorgeous.
Pro Consistent development practices
All Elementary apps are written in Vala and hosted on Launchpad, and there are standard APIs such as contractor for applications to interact with one another. This is different from most distros, in which apps are written in a variety of languages. This design decision makes it easy to get started developing for Elementary and to understand how the various pieces fit together.
Pro A new approach to many old ideas.
Simple little details to user friendliness that surprise Linux/Mac/ and Windows users alike.
Cons
Con Old base and applications
The slow release schedule makes the applications outdated. It drags behind Ubuntu LTS (on which it's based) which itself drags behind Ubuntu which is often still quite far behind Arch for example.
Con Very slow development cycle
elementary does not offer any release date for their stable releases going more with a "it's done when it's done" attitude. Making depending on newer apps a difficulty as well as a poor choice for those that need consistent release schedules for their OS.
Con Hangs often
Crashes often, especially when using a browser (whether it is Midori, Chrome, Chromium, Epiphany or Firefox). Granted, it's still is probalby faster than running Windows on the same (especially old) machine.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Con Crashes frequently
It looks great, yes its faster, but no matter the hardware it will crash for no reason up the 3rd reboot, its a fact. at the beggining it will run smooth but after a couple hours using it, it will crash; besides that, so slow development, no stable version (after 2 years i come back now and you are still on the same beta? that's disapointing); a great idea, far far yet to be done
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con No official forums [CORRECTED: NOW THEY DO]
For some reason the elementary devs do not want to have a forum for discussion making finding fixes for issues difficult to find as the only resource elementary uses is G+, which does not lend itself well to problem solving or large ongoing easily readable discussions.