Well, to be honest, I've never used Linspire. I have it, because my father-in-law invested in the company. I have however used Mandrake and it is quite similar.

I think Linspire is basically a decent OS for someone looking for easy of use in Linux. Sure hard core Linux users dog it.. for a variety of reasons.. one is that Linspire encourages you to boot in root I believe.

Root is like the admin account in XP. With root open and not password protected it leaves your system vulnerable to intrusions.

That said, you can add a password quite simply.

Beyond that, I say take a look at these sites:

The first compares Linux to XP, and Linux is the foundation of Linspire:

http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html

Another fantastic article that goes into detail on Linspire specifically is:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8949

I might try it out when I have some spare time and give you my personal take on it. Sorry I couldn't now.