This bug report is not about how difficult or easy OSes are to install.  It is 
about how difficult it is to buy a machine with a decent OS pre-installed.

@ Martin

I think we are agreeing but have semantic differences.  Imo an install is not 
complete until the system is tweaked and made usable for the use the user 
requires.  A basic install of Windows is not ready to use imo.  A basic install 
of Ubuntu is also not fully ready (imo) but has stuff ready to use that Windows 
doesn't and usually takes less to get it ready.

To get Windows to the same level as Ubuntu you have to install many programs 
such as Office (i would use OpenOffice in Windows, not MicroSquish Office, and 
Firefox not IE for safety and security).  'Obviously' for OpenOffice/LibreOffice 
i would do 

Tools - Options - Load/Save
to set all the defaults to the unsafe ".doc" and ".xls" ones that people prefer 
in the Windows-world.

Then both Windows & Ubuntu need multimedia players (Vlc for both, also MPlayer 
for Ubuntu and hopefully Zoom Player for Windows), Gimp (for both) and whichever 
other packages the user would appear to need from whatever they have been 
talking about, mostly Ubuntu already covers those but Windows doesn't.  Ubuntu 
makes a lot of that easy by following the Community Documentation Medibuntu page 
but there are countless blogs, magazines and stuff either in the fake-world or 
online that cover the multimedia issues.

Both Windows and Ubuntu need drivers for any oddly awkward hardware.  For Ubuntu 
these are mostly online but it may take some hunting to find them.  For Windows 
you might need to find that crusty old Cd that came with the device.  Inevitably 
some stuff wont work with Windows because "it is too old and you should buy a 
new device and stop being such a cheapskate".  With Ubuntu some newer stuff wont 
work but might do fairly soon especially if you post a bug-report about it.  Ati 
& NVidia have communities doing a lot of work right now and updates happen quite 
frequently.  Even the companies themselves are making efforts to provide more 
support (for fear of losing customers now linux usage is reaching above 4%).  
Other companies will follow their lead.

Both Windows and Ubuntu will need to be updated and this is one area that Ubuntu 
really scores highly because it does everything, all the codecs, libraries, 
drivers, programs, packages, everything all in one go & you can walk away and 
leave it to get on with it with no further interaction.  Windows will usually 
require several reboots and requires the update process to be repeated many 
times before it is 'completely' updated.  Also Windows tends to  make a fuss 
about stuff requiring user-input.  Also Windows doesn't update any of the 
drivers or programs, not even free ones such as Adobe flash-player or pdf 
reader.  So an ubuntu system is fully patched and ready whereas a Windows one 
seldom reaches that stage.

Both systems often need tweaking to set which applications are preferred for 
certain tasks (right-click on a file-type and set what it opens with) although 
with Windows you seldom get a choice and just have to be careful about which 
programs you install last as each one grabs control.  With Ubuntu you can 
finesse it at almost any point.

However, none of this is what this bug-report is about.  All of this depends on 
the skill (in the particular OS they are attempting to install) of the person 
doing the install and how easy they find it to access useful help if they run 
into problems.  Again, that is not what this bug-report is about.
Regards from
Tom :)