Upgrading from official to Cyanogen

I am now running on my HTC Desire G official Android 2.3 Gingerbread. But last week I saw my friend was using Cyanogen.
I became envious of him. Now I want to upgrade my android OS from official 2.3 Gingerbread to stable Cyanogen mod 7.
Is it safe? What are the benefits?

Do they outweigh the cons?
