I don't have a single good thing to say about Ubuntu, but it's hard to imagine most people jumping right into the deep end with Linux. Sure, Ubuntu is the wrong way to start IMO, but at least it shows people it's possible.
Speaking of what a joke laptop manufacturers are though, sometime around 2005 or 2006 when I worked in retail, we got these brand new, ~$3200 HP laptops in. DV4000something. While trying to upgrade a customer's laptop to use both DIMMs, we found out that this was impossible. Somehow, HP produced an entire line of laptops where the contacts for the second DIMM slot had no connections to the rest of the circuitboard. We opened up all the ones shipped to our store and confirmed with stores in other states. This actually made it through their QA process!
Speaking of what a joke laptop manufacturers are though, sometime around 2005 or 2006 when I worked in retail, we got these brand new, ~$3200 HP laptops in. DV4000something. While trying to upgrade a customer's laptop to use both DIMMs, we found out that this was impossible. Somehow, HP produced an entire line of laptops where the contacts for the second DIMM slot had no connections to the rest of the circuitboard. We opened up all the ones shipped to our store and confirmed with stores in other states. This actually made it through their QA process!