I offered my laptop for my wife to borrow as it's XP SP2, Office 2007 and kicks the requirements ass three-fold. However, she never had to use it because they all get free access to the computer labs, which quite ironically all run Vista even though the requirements were for XP. She could essentially do every bit of work for the class at school, yet they're telling all the students they need a laptop.
If she does need a laptop in her second year then we'll probably get her an Acer Aspire One as they're like $350 from Costco and meet the colleges minimum specs. Plus I wouldn't have a problem using it if she ever needed a more powerful laptop.
I personally dislike Ubuntu, but I think the bigger deal here is that colleges set ridiculous requirements. I mean I don't use Ubuntu, I don't even want to touch the sucker, but even I know that if I was stuck I just need to download OpenOffice! I think a college, who have computer departments (and my wifes has free advice on fixing any computer problem from their computer department, or tax-free repairs) could figure this one out. Even Google Docs saves in Word documents!
On the case of the internet, that's Verizon's fault for not keeping up to date, but even then I installed my first internet connection at like 7 years old. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to dumbly stumble my way into setting up the internet on Ubuntu and I could have it done within a couple of minutes with a guide on how to do it or even the knowledge of where things are in Ubuntu.
Summary: Absolutely everyone in this case was retarded. The girl shouldn't have quit, should have returned the laptop or just dealt with it through OpenOffice and calling verizon to ask how to install it manually. Verizon should create a setup disk for Linux. Dell should be shipping its Ubuntu versions with OpenOffice. Linux users shouldn't freak out and give the media a free article.