Dell laptop with Ubuntu leads woman to drop out of college

[GOD]

It?s quite a statement to make ? ?I dropped out of college because my Dell laptop had Ubuntu on it?. But that?s what this story boils down to.
A woman by the name of Abbie Schubert enrolled in the Madison Area Technical College (MATC). Her intention was to take a number of classes online and therefore she needed a laptop on which to view the course material and do her course work. She turned to Dell and spent $1,100 buying a machine she thought was suitable direct from their website.
When it arrived Abbie expected to boot the machine up and see the Microsoft Windows logo, but to her surprise instead she saw the Ubuntu logo. Calling Dell?s support line a bit confused she asked what Ubuntu was. The support person explained it was an alternative OS and even though she could switch to Windows she was advised that she could do everything she needed to on the popular Linux distro.
Abbie decided to stick with Ubuntu, but then started running into problems. Remember, she is not a technical person and required a laptop that she could just use. Her first blocker was the Verizon CD she had for setting up an Internet account which wouldn?t work with Ubuntu. Then she found out her MATC courses required Microsoft Word format documents for coursework submission ? she didn?t know or realize OpenOffice was on her machine and that it can produce Word documents.
Totally frustrated she contacted Dell again, but this time she was told swapping to Windows was no longer an option. After that the only option in her eyes was to then drop out of her courses as she could not access the content or produce the work as they required it.
Since then, with the help of WKOWTV.com, a Verizon engineer has arranged a visit to sort out her Internet and MATC have said they can show Abbie how to save her documents in OpenOffice to be compatible with their submission procedures.
Read more at WKOWTV.com
Matthew?s Opinion
The problem here is a lack of knowledge and some wayward advice from a Dell support person. If you were working on the Dell support line and had a woman phoning you confused as to what Ubuntu was would you recommend she continue to use it?
I think I would ask a few more questions and find out what her level of experience was. Not knowing what Ubuntu is puts it quite low to begin with, but you could ask her if she knew what OpenOffice was, if she had heard of Linux, and how many years she had been using Windows at the very least.
I?d also like to know how she managed to order a laptop with Ubuntu without realizing. Do any of Dell?s laptops default to ship with Ubuntu? If they don?t she must have selected it and the fault was hers. MATC should also update their submission policies to include formats other than Microsoft Word documents and embrace the OpenDocument format.
Another question to ask is whether this problem could have been resolved if new installs of Ubuntu (and other distros) came with a ?New to Linux?? introductory presentation. This could load up on boot and offer a very simple introduction to performing the most common tasks like setting up the Internet, and using OpenOffice. I?m not talking about a text-heavy wiki or PDF here, but an actual visual presentation like that produced in Powerpoint or Impress. Does something like this already exist for new Linux users?
The popularity of Linux is clearly growing, as are the number of PC manufacturers offering it as an alternative to Windows. We are likely going to have more cases like this where a user gets Linux and learning resources just need to be in place to help get over those first few hurdles.

WTF? Just give it back, get a different one.

[StupidMonKey]

"Totally frustrated she contacted Dell again"

Awesome journalism skills here.

[IMAMEX]

This lady got mega pwnt.