There’s still a lot of people who are clueless about computers or how to deal with stores and salespeople who are equally clueless about what they’re selling. With a lot of netbooks being sold with Linux, you just know this sort of thing will happen over and over.

Abbie Schubert paid more than $1,100 for a Dell laptop hoping to enroll in online classes at MATC.
[…]
Schubert says she ordered her laptop online at Dell.com expecting to buy your classic bread-and-butter computer.

She didn’t realize until the next morning her laptop defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system.

“It’s been a mess,” she said. “I regret ordering the computer.”

Schubert says she never heard of Ubuntu before learning that’s when she accidentally bought. She called Dell the very next day and says the representative told her there was still time to change back to Windows.

But she says Dell discouraged her.
[…]
Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won’t load, so she can’t access the internet. She also can’t install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC’s online classes.

As a result, with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC’s fall and spring semesters.