WKOW TV has the unbelievable story of Abbie who failed to get a college education from Madison Area Technical College. To attend online courses she bought a Dell computer. Unbelievable? Well, they claim, she bought an Ubuntu machine – by accident. That's Unbelievable!

If you think there's a grain of truth to this story, you never visited Dell's website. Go there now! The first thing you will notice is the confusion about all those fake options: Home vs. Office, Latitude vs. Vostro. However, all these computers in all those categories are Windows computers (except for the Mini netbook, which is available with Ubuntu or Windows XP). If you really want Ubuntu from Dell you have to navigate to dell.com/ubuntu, where you will find a huge warning that Ubuntu is not Windows. And if you're unsure, they will always recommend Windows.

So, it's obvious now that she knew she was buying an Ubuntu PC, which differs from the "bread and butter" Windows thing. Probably someone recommended it to her.

The article further claims the poor girl failed two semesters (and dropped out of college) because of Ubuntu. So Abbie spend a full year doing exactly nothing because Dell sold her a computer that didn't work for her. She failed and now she's blaming it on an operating system. I sens quality journalism here.

Listen, Abbie, a technical issue (a Windows virus, some proprietary bullshit that doesn't work with Linux, or the bad karma you get for buying an overpriced Mac) can keep you busy for a week, not a year. We have been through this before, it's a pretty lame excuse. Even if they throw a Slide Rule at you – they work on a logarithmic system, which won't run Microsoft Word,– you should be able to figure things out in less than a week.

By the way, did everyone notice:

• Both WKOW and Dell have ".asp" in their URIs, proudly showing their love for a Software Giant from Redmond.
• No one from the Ubuntu community offered to help Abbie with her Linux problems. Maybe even Geeks can learn not to feed the media troll.

Poor Abbie, you probably want to talk to this WKOWTV station, they made you look bad on the internet.

Update: WOKW has posted two follow-ups to this story.