Tim

I have friends who bought the Dell 9 and while the wifi works well, the audio-video situation sucks ass and all three of them were rather disgusted by what the Ubuntu's Gnome interface offers.
Totem is pure garbage for video and fugly and people should dump this ASAP for VLC which is amazing no matter what OS you use (I have never had to worry on Windows which codec/format Im using), its ridiculously simple yet can be very modifiable and just works.
Rhythmbox is also just as bad for audio and Ive had to install for them Amarok which is a KDE player which is very reminiscent of the beloved ol Winamp.

Finally, Pidgin on the Gnome side is useless as it doesnt do video for Yahoo IM (or any video) while the KDE Kopete does it.

Its easy to forget that Linux has many interfaces (I prefer the simple and light XFCE which is ideal for old hardware) and its well known that Windows users invariably feel more at home with KDE.
While not everyone wants to change every little thing in their interface, its still nice to have the option.

I would still go with a distro that uses the v3.59 of KDE.
The v4.1 is just about ready so it should be good for v.4.2. They did major infrastructure changes with v4.x and there are still loose ends to bring it back to 3.59 functionality.

Tutorials with screenshots are always good but it does take for granted some things like “The Bluetooth radio and webcam both work after they have been enabled in the BIOS.”
No, that's not good enough. If youre gonna do this tutorial, dont be lazy and take things like that for granted. Explain how to enable it in the BIOS. He gets a 7/10.

I have friends who bought the Dell 9 and while the wifi works well, the audio-video situation sucks ass and all three of them were rather disgusted by what the Ubuntu's Gnome interface offers.
Totem is pure garbage for video and fugly and people should dump this ASAP for VLC which is amazing no matter what OS you use (I have never had to worry on Windows which codec/format Im using), its ridiculously simple yet can be very modifiable and just works.
Rhythmbox is also just as bad for audio and Ive had to install for them Amarok which is a KDE player which is very reminiscent of the beloved ol Winamp.

Finally, Pidgin on the Gnome side is useless as it doesnt do video for Yahoo IM (or any video) while the KDE Kopete does it.

Its easy to forget that Linux has many interfaces (I prefer the simple and light XFCE which is ideal for old hardware) and its well known that Windows users invariably feel more at home with KDE.
While not everyone wants to change every little thing in their interface, its still nice to have the option.

I would still go with a distro that uses the v3.59 of KDE.
The v4.1 is just about ready so it should be good for v.4.2. They did major infrastructure changes with v4.x and there are still loose ends to bring it back to 3.59 functionality.

Tutorials with screenshots are always good but it does take for granted some things like “The Bluetooth radio and webcam both work after they have been enabled in the BIOS.”
No, that's not good enough. If youre gonna do this tutorial, dont be lazy and take things like that for granted. Explain how to enable it in the BIOS. He gets a 7/10.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lp1TlL5Rqc