Woman Blames Dell, Ubuntu for Missing Two Semesters of College

If only I was smart enough to think of flunking out of college and blaming it on my computer. If she can sell that story and get away with it, college probably isn't right for her anyway. I would suggest a career in luxury real estate, she can sell nice homes to rappers and athletes that just signed a deal.

For me? Awww, gee, thanks!

Seriously - she ordered the laptop not realizing the OS - IOW she didn't really read very carefully, she just saw the price and ordered one. When she got it, yeah, it can open M$ documents using OO.o, etc. - but guess what? A lot of these basic computer / intro to computer classes require that you have the software installed so you can practice - tests go something like this:

Code:

1)  The _____ menu is where all of the text formatting settings are located.

2)  T or F:  In Excel you can easily draw up histograms without linking to any data.

3)  How would you link an Excel spreadsheet to a Word document in order to have one concise compiled document?

Get my drift? having OO.o is great - sure it opens all those docs and whatnot - but the interface is *very* different from M$ Office, and not ribbonized like O07, and placement of settings, etc. is going to be completely different - not to mention the procedure used to accomplish the exact same tasks.

Try saving files in Ubuntu to "My Documents". Better yet, try to explain to someone who does not even know what *nix is how to convert a M$ document into OO.o format - and vice versa.

*you* know *nix can do this, and *I* know it can - but from the perspective that the lady is coming from, she don't know jack - and Dell screwed her, plain and simple. When she said she needed a Windows computer the customer service rep had ***no business*** trying to talk her out of it.

Here is the link to the original story - WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports -27 News Troubleshooter: Woman blames Dell for missing online classes

Now, I'd like to quote some of the original story and then the followup:

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184 said:

Schubert says she never heard of Ubuntu until learning that she accidentally bought it. 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.

"The person I was talking to said Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed," said Schubert.

So she stuck with it.

She was persuaded by a CSR that "all the college students love it" - wtf? Since when is [s]he the penultimate (because we all know that sysadmins and M$ staff, not to mention the admins at this board and especially myself rank above Dell CSRs) expert on what college students love? Even more to the point, since when is [s]he the $%^&#$^& expert on what they *need*?

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184 said:

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.

Go figure - Verizon sends her a Windows CD. Word, as we all know, don't work too well without Wine - and even then it don't work too well without Mono - and even then - well, it just don't work.

But this is the part that burns me up about Dell:

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184 said:

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

She also says Dell claimed it was now too late to get Windows and any changes she made herself would void her warranty.

"I'm extremely frustrated," said Schubert. "I wanted to get back to school, but I needed a computer to be able to do that."

27 News contacted Dell, but the company has not responded to us yet.

Great Customer ***Service*** I say. Simply great. It is because of things just like this that I build my own machines - and if I cannot build one then I make do with what is available until I can (hence me testing Vista on a P4 2.0 GHz machine....)

This woman obviously is a novitiate when it comes to computers, and did make the mistake of going online and ordering something herself without knowing the facts, and without having someone who *does* know computers there with her- but Dell dropped the ball big time on this. For one, they have ***no business*** to try to get out of replacing a machine that is not satisfactory to the users needs - #1 credo in the service industry. Also, they had no business telling her that she is now *unable* to get Windows - the case has obviously been opened before, and *any* check of a call log will show that in fact the CSR dropped the ball - and Ms. Abbie will need to be ***at the very least*** compensated by having her laptop replaced with a serviceable one.

Shame on Dell.

Then, it really hit ht ceiling, as seen in the follow up - WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports -UPDATE: Thousands of viewer comments, phone calls about Ubuntu computer story

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9682258&nav=menu1362_2 said:

Ubuntu is an operating system that contains Linux. It's free and part of what's called open source software. Ubuntu also, clearly, has an extremely passionate fan base.

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9682258&nav=menu1362_2 said:

Ubuntu fans read our story and linked to it on Linux fan message boards and other technology blogs. By Thursday morning, several major technology websites featured WKOW's article on their front pages.

That's also when the comments - many of them angry, rude, and hateful - started pouring in.

Some Ubuntu users accused 27 News of "unscrupulous reporting," hitting a "new low for local news," and writing an "atrocious article."

Many Ubuntu users also wrote very personal attacks about the young lady who was having trouble using the operating system. They called her "lazy," "a dumb girl," and "not worthy of a college degree."

The young woman also contacted 27 News to report she's being harassed on her Facebook account by Ubuntu users.

WTF??? have these so-called Ubuntu fanboys gotten so jaded that they have forgotten that they, too, once never knew what *nix was, that they too were once novitiates, that they too ***did not come out of the womb knowing everything about Operating Systems and document compatibility between different operating systems?

I forayed into UNIX back in the mid 90s - our school back then had a nice UNIX based client / server approach in the mini computer lab where I worked, and was just getting a Nursing program off the ground - and thus had to have Nursing study / practice exams administered on the computer, using that same client / server approach. I then forayed back into the *nix world in 2001-02, when I tried Fedora Core 4(?) - or whichever was present at the time. I then moved to using Con Kalivas optimized kernel patches, to compiling my own kernel by hand, to running a system with a bootstrapped from scratch *nix, mainly Gentoo, while I had the time. Even today, with my knowledge and expertise in Windows based machines, and in hardware in general, plus my relatively strong skills in *nix, I would *never* say a woman who is computer illiterate is "too dumb for college."

If I were a more vindictive person (or, I should say, if I were more like the person who said that), I might say that said person is "...too stupid to be allowed to live." However, having served in these forums (and *many, many* others) for a very long time, and having worked in IT for 12+ years, 90% of it in Tier I and Tier II End user / technical support, I know that there are varying degrees of expertise. But it still burns me up when people make such hateful remarks like that in order to defend their OS of choice. Makes me *not* want to be a part of that group. Never know when the lightning is coming....

Now, let's look at another factor - as I stated in the beginning of this post, if the class *requires* M$ Word then it requires M$ Word. When a person is delving into a set of classes with obviously very little pre-knowledge, do you really think it is fair for her to have to learn a whole new OS she has never heard of, in an environment where she'll probably be ostracized by her professors for not having the "appropriate" required OS and Office suite? Do you think it is fair for her to have to spend an extra 2-4 hours a night trying to translate what her professors tell her to do in Windows into how to do those same commands in *nix?

I got a great idea - let's start a class about Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning - and use a computer heatsink and processor to teach the class. Better yet, let's start a class about - hmmm, here's a good one - Windows 7 and Office 2007 - and use Mac OS X 10.5 and iWorks to teach it.

Get my drift?

It was utterly ridiculous of those users to try to make it look like this was a slander attempt - the story was not about the *nix on the box, it was about how she needed one thing and Dell gave her another - through her own errors initially but through their sheer incompetence and simple laziness afterward.

Near the end of the article, Dell finally steps up to the plate, *after* she has been shown how things work and after the school has agreed to work with her in her situation:

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9682258&nav=menu1362_2 said:

Meanwhile, Dell contacted 27 News to say its representatives would contact the young woman to help her deal with her computer situation.

Yeah, great. She's lost 2 semesters and *now* you want to give her a sub-par laptop - and, let me guess - this is because you got one from another customer who was also dissatisfied with their9r laptop, only this time your CSR did his or her job and replace the unit instead of spending time on the phone to save a couple of air bills and refurbishing costs.

Way to go Dell. Definitely more than a day late, and absolutely more than a dollar short.

Finally, the fiasco for the news station didn't end there - it got worse. In a news station blog- Dan Cassuto’s Response to Ubuntu Story - the (I assume) news editor had this to say:

http://addins.wkowtv.com/blogs/troubleshooter/?p=24#comment-3 said:

I also consider this story a success.

Our only intention was to help a young woman who clearly needed help. And we helped her wonderfully. She’s got internet now. She’s also learned how to produce word processing documents compatible with Microsoft Word using Ubuntu’s OpenOffice.org. Now she’s able to enroll in online courses again and get on with her education.

I think that’s fantastic.

Sure, many of you could’ve jumped those roadblocks without calling a television reporter. But she couldn’t.

Sadly, thousands of Ubuntu fans didn’t care about this woman’s struggle to enroll in online courses. They didn’t care whether this young woman went to college or not. They cared about the reputation of Ubuntu.

We treated it fairly. It wasn’t the glowing love-fest many of its passionate fans would’ve wanted, but that’s not our job. It wasn’t a scientific explanation of how Ubuntu might be better than Windows, but that’s also not our job. That also wasn’t the point of the story.

I myself have added a comment saying much the same thing - they were fair, and shame on the fanboys.

As a final parting shot, Dan states the following:

http://addins.wkowtv.com/blogs/troubleshooter/?p=24#comment-3 said:

I’ll end this letter with two facts you might find surprising.

First, I am typing this message in OpenOffice.org right now.

And second, I don’t use Windows on my personal computer.

Eat that, fanboys.

Kudos to the news team for doing what they did, and getting this story the national attention that it ***deserved***.

You said a mouthful there John. Well put.

as a user of both open-source (suse and openoffice and more i cant name) and close source (windows office and more i cant think of) i agree completely with you john (never thought of it that way, i guess that make me a Win7 fanboy now...lol)

but when i read the full story i was shocked on how the Dell rep treated her

she is entitled under the full proctection of the Magnuson-Moss act to return it and either choose another product or have the money refunded (if by any chance changed OS's).....

Please post that as a comment at Dan's blog - Dan Cassuto’s Response to Ubuntu Story

And I wonder if she knows about this: Does Dell Owe You Money?

johngalt said:

WTF??? have these so-called Ubuntu fanboys gotten so jaded that they have forgotten that they, too, once never knew what *nix was, that they too were once novitiates, that they too ***did not come out of the womb knowing everything about Operating Systems and document compatibility between different operating systems?

Ahh, that's where your wrong. Kids these days do pop out of the womb knowing absolutely EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. Just ask them, they'll tell you. Then they'll proceed to berate you because you didn't know something, nOOb

smarteyeball said:

Ahh, that's where your wrong. Kids these days do pop out of the womb knowing absolutely EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. Just ask them, they'll tell you. Then they'll proceed to berate you because you didn't know something, nOOb

so does that make me one of them???...

if it does then...

oops..

smarteyeball said:

Ahh, that's where your wrong. Kids these days do pop out of the womb knowing absolutely EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. Just ask them, they'll tell you. Then they'll proceed to berate you because you didn't know something, nOOb

Heh - I resemble that remark....

darkassain said:

so does that make me one of them???...

if it does then...

oops..

*us* two - don't leave me hangin like dat, yo!

No! Lol :)

johngalt said:

*us* two - don't leave me hangin like dat, yo!

Maybe I've just got a youthful aura