Even though I love Ubuntu, I can see why many people will never switch to Linux at this stage. It took me a while to try to do as simple as changing the time zone of my laptop when I have a short vacation back home in Hong Kong. Some Linux lovers will probably disapprove those who are unwilling to perform some simple search for questions like these. But I am afraid this attitude is probably not helping. Until windows-like GUIs are seamlessly integrated to provide all simple functions like these, the non-technical bunch will never embrace Linux.
Anyway, the command for changing time zone is
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata