I've found Balance to be a little better for leveling so far, simply because the no cooldown on TK Throw, buffing Project, instant Force in Balance AoE [instead of the atrocious 3 second cast time on TK Wave until Tidal Wave], Presence of Mind procs, and the generally better efficiency all contribute to make everything more fluid. And this is basically all in the first 10-15 points. I tried starting out as TK, but the early levels I found very haphazard in terms of rotations and the early talents seem more like investments for the future rather than talents that help immediately, like in Balance. I think TK is something I might pick up in the 30s or so once I can start getting some good gear and can unlock all the good abilities in the tree.
One thing I notice, Balance starts out buffing a lot of the direct damage skills...but once I'm 16 points in there isn't an attractive DD buffing talent in the tree. So Balance has been good to me early, but now that it's becoming a DoT tree I feel like I'm capped out with my playstyle of spam TK Throw and toss out Mind Crush/Disturbance on PoM procs while I maintain Weaken Mind and nothing I spec in to above 16 is going to buff that tremendously, while TK seems to benefit a lot more with late talents. Also, TK throw, the spec's main nuke, doesn't seem to benefit from Force Suppression or Mental Scarring which is extremely underwhelming. So, as long as I'm leveling and it doesn't matter too much, I'm thinking of just going TK the rest of the way to 50, so I can start using those PoM procs on TK Wave. It's going to look something like this: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#600Zfcb0dRruzZcMcRs0z.1
Hideous? Certainly. Not viable for end game really without Turbulence and the critical bonus from TK tree but for leveling and some PvP interspersed, I think I can live it. I dream of tossing out instant +20% damage TK Waves after my proc'ed 1.5s TK Throws.