Well odds are, you don’t use the word Ubuhntu very often, or, maybe, not at all. It’s a type of operating system for your computer, similar to Windows.

But, it is NOT Windows, and what works on Windows doesn’t always work on Ubuhntu! And that’s (idiotic editor muffles sound with news jingle) case of a young woman who just wanted to take some online classes at MATC.

I’m so glad we could help this woman, because she called us specifically because she wanted to be able to go take those courses at MATC, and she bought a new laptop to be able to do that. That’s when she called me. She thought her laptop was coming with Windows. Instead, she got that thing called Ubuhntu. Pronunciation was the least of her problems.

“It has just been a mess, and, um, I regret, ordering the computer…”

Abbie Schubert’s life was supposed to start getting easier with this new Dell laptop, but let’s be clear: it’s not.

“The main purpose I have bought the computer was to go back to school.”

She wanted to enrol in online classes at MATC. That’s on hold, and she blames Dell.

She bought the eleven hundred dollar laptop online, thinking she was getting your standard bread-and-butter machine.

“It defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system.”

The next day, she realised what happened and tried to change back to Windows.

“The, uh, person I was talking to told me, everything, that Ubuntu, you know, it was great, and, how students loved it, it was, compatible with everything that I needed…”

So she took Dell’s advice and stuck with it. She quickly learned Ubuhntu might look a lot like Windows, but it sure doesn’t act like it.

“I tried to, um, get, on the Internet on it, and that did not, work, and, I found out that Microsoft Word is not compatible…”

That’s because her Verizon Internet CD won’t load on Ubuhntu, and Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice, and not Word. By the time she found all this out, Dell said it was too late to go back to Windows, and this semester, it’s too late to go back to MATC.

“Extremely frustrated, I am, just, I’m sick of it, and, I, wanted to get back to school, but, I need a computer to be able to do that, heh.”

Well, that was, of course, before she called 27 News and we were able to help her. We’re still waiting to hear from Dell to what they have to say about this, but we are going to be able to help Abbie get back to school. I called MATC this afternoon. They said, no problem, she can enroll in any of their classes with what she’s already got installed on her machine. Then I called Verizon about that CD that wasn’t working, and they said the CD might not work, but they will still be able to get a tech support crew to her house so she can start using the Internet with her current machine, Ubuhntu, pronunciation, she might have to work on that a little bit but at least she can get back to school and start doing what she wants to do.

What a huge hassle.

Yeah.