Rome5

+1 for Linux Mint.

I think for what you're looking for, Mint would be a good starting place. It's lighter than both Fedora and Ubuntu so you'll notice better speed. Also as user friendly as either of the others, maybe even more so in a few areas. You'll find plenty of support from the Mint community, but can always go to any general Linux forum to get help (such as right here).

As far as the eye-candy, don't worry about choosing a distro based on that alone. You can pretty much tweak and tune linux to look any way you want it.