A lot of comments seem to be saying that the school should just offer a set of requirements that the laptop must meet and then let the student choose whatever brand they want. The problem with that is that since the school *requires* laptops, they are also probably supporting the laptops. If that is the case they would be insane to support whatever the student decided to buy. They would have to standardize on one brand and stick with it just to keep the support headache to a minimum. I haven't read the article, so I don't know for a fact that the school does support the laptops. But I imagine they do....

Sure, if the average user decides he likes Gnome best, he can still use KDE applications, but the little inconsitencies in the interface will start to wear on him. Why is that? Because the inconsistencies lead to things not "just working". Users don't want to have to know 3 different ways to paste something based on what toolkit the app is based on. They just want to go to Edit -> Paste (the more savvy ones may know Control+V) and have it work.

I have to ask whether you've ever used Microsoft's OS. The interface varies from tool to tool and many applications completely ignore all standard UI guidelines. Windows Media Player continues to eschew all expected interface decisions. Even Microsoft Office 2000 was different between Word and Excel (MDI versus SDI). I agree that more commonality between all applications and OS components helps, but it clearly isn't a hinderance to "user friendly" status.