colour and design are related
also you can do all the things you just said by downloading things for windows online
But you have no choice of which desktop environment you want. In Linux there's Gnome, XFCE, KDE, LXDE, Unity, etc.
And customization for Windows goes as far as choosing which side of the screen you want your taskbar on and if you want to auto-hide it or not. And you only get one by default. In order to get more, you need to download some weird-ass software from some corner of the internet.
(Relatively) Cheap and convenient > Free and hard-to-use (For the general population)
Meh. If you want it to be convenient you should probably go with Windows, but I still prefer Linux for my own personal uses.
Oh and also, Ubuntu is pretty damn easy to use. It's so easy, that most Linux users say it sucks.