Switching to LINQ

You are starting a new project in which you can use LINQ for the first time. You have never worked with LINQ before, but you have studied it on your own time and you see its advantages. You see possibilities for using LINQ to Entities, LINQ to Objects, and LINQ to XML in your projects and you try to introduce them in your company. However, some of your coworkers are having some doubts. Will LINQ be fast enough? Is it easy to maintain? Do we need to use the method or query syntax? Try to help your colleagues by answering these questions for them:

Does LINQ have any performance problems? If so, should it be avoided?
Is LINQ easy to maintain?
What are the differences between method and query syntax? Which should be used?