[spinaltap]

My wife (a teacher) was given a free Toshiba laptop by her employers recently.

It's loaded with Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and Publisher - and she's completed qualifications on using these programs.

In the last six months the laptop has been switched on a few times just 'for the look and feel' experience.

However, it's rarely used for anything that could be described as 'productive' - and takes an eternity to check for the latest Windows and Norton updates (often in the background, without the ability to cancel the process).

Had we had actually spent our own money on buying this laptop I would have been deeply aggrieved on spending so much money on something that wasn't used.

So, what is my wife using instead? She says our Mac is so much easier to use (and without any supervision by me - unlike her Windows laptop). Despite her Windows software training, she is a real technophobe. She uses our Mac very productively for producing reports and papers.

I might suggest that your wife should care deeply about the technology. I would be very surprised if it didn't take her very long to realise that she had made a serious error in judgement in buying a Windows laptop with her (your) own money.