I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.10 and was very unhappy with Unity. Fortunately I found out about Lubuntu, which is "a variant of Ubuntu that is lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient by using lightweight applications and LXDE, The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, as its default GUI." It is wonderful, fast and efficient! Get it here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu#Get_Lubuntu

I have long suspected newegg of this practice. Some of the reviews are very similar, all very positive, look like they're written by the sales staff. In the non-computer world, Yelp has lots of fake reviews, too.

I love my Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu, and yes, I chose that netbook specifically because I could get it with Ubuntu. It runs much better than it would running XP, and I can do everything I need with it. (But, I administer unix boxen as part of my job. Would I get my mother a laptop running Linux? Not so sure about that...)

Lincoln was an early adopter for something else too. After receiving as a gift a harmonica from the Hohner harmonica company he wrote in a letter to them, "Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica." Yes, Honest Abe toked up. My admiration for our 16th president increases.