Text editor recommendations

[madanabhat27 at gmail.com]

Hi all,
I was wondering which is the text editor you'd recommend for me, considering that I'm a TOTAL newbie to linux and having JUST migrated from MS Windows Vista Business where I was using notepad.. Some of my friends recommended vim and others recommended emacs but I'm a bit confused as to which one to pick, 
Yours, 
KMB
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