I was very happy with Ubuntu 11.4 then it comes to the end of the support run and I have to upgrade to 11.10 what crap. Things have just kept braking and I spent more time finding fixes then using the system.
Looked at other options and have gone for mint 13 64bit seems a lot crisper and responsive.
Upgrades are IMHO never as smooth as a fresh install … and Mint 13 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 not 11.10 … but whatever floats your particular boat, that’s the beauty of it 
Changing from Ubuntu to Mint is not so much ‘changing horse’ as it is putting a considerably more comfortable saddle on the same horse.
If you’ll forgive the analogy.
Previous releases would have been like dying the horses hair green … but yeh with MATE, I’ll go with the “changing saddle” analogy (though I’d probably leave out the “more comfortable” bit … comfort is subjective)
(maybe more like putting back on a favourite old but broken saddle)
Cinnamon however is IMHO more like shifting your a** in the same saddle 
I changed from Ubuntu to Mint 13…brilliant, although I did have a few glitches until patches and updates were fed through. It would hang and lock up like the old Windows 3.1 
Now though, all 3 of my laptops are running it. Smooth slick and does the job (32bit)