Hmm, a Mac sounds perfect for my dad. He can't even figure out how to send a page link with Opera 
-kyrathaba
Except that my parents have been using Macs for 13 years (OS 9 through Snow Leopard) and they can never find anything on the damned things! They have no concept of File Management, accepting and trusting that Apple knows where their files and documents should go. Of course, Searchlight or Quicksilver make finding the files fairly easy, but every so often I have to dig around to find stuff for them. Infuriating - I'm always trying to get them to use folders but most stuff winds up on their desktop...
OK typed the above and then kept reading the thread - JavaJones nailed it! My parents have a friend who WILL.NOT.SWITCH.TO.WINDOWS but who has ENDLESS problems with her iMac running Leopard - e-mail settings, printer drivers, print settings, iPhoto... Actually, Java's comments about iPhoto resonated because I've been called out a couple of times to find her pictures for her - she moves them onto her PC from her Canon point and shoot and they disappear. I set iPhoto to scan her harddrive and find them, but then she's stuck with a database of thousands of icons and gets mad because she can't GET to her photos, which are buried somewhere in the database. It's crazy!
I bought my parents first a Compaq netbook running XP Pro with 2GB of RAM and then a Gateway ultra-portable notebook with Windows 7 64-bit and 4GB of RAM. The netbook went to my mum about a year ago and the notebook to my dad in August. They both love them, but I've had to spend time training both of them about Windows file management "idiosyncracies"... At the very least, they appreciate both OS's and can see the strengths and weaknesses of both whereas prior to my dad getting the Windows 7 machine they really assumed that the Mac was easier to use and more secure. I'm rambling.
Superboy - thank you for starting the thread. It's very thought compelling. I have an iBook running Tiger and I've tried a myriad of the third party file management solutions available for it. The ones I liked are EXPEN$IVE and ultimately never overcome the lack of flexibility inherent in how Apple does things. I never did buy one of them because it seems simpler and more cost effective to "go with the flow"... but the point is, that alternatives do exist, as SKA pointed out (and XFileSystem is one of the ones I tried and like). Incidentally, one of the other things that pissed me off about OS X 10.x is that with every release third party developers drop suppport for earlier versions. So there are lots of apps out there that for which paid users are frozen at a particular build because support for their flavour of OSX is no longer supported. One could argue that with Apple's much more reasonable upgrade pricing this wouldn't be a particular problem. However, Apple has a tendency to drop support for earlier hardware means that users with older computers are not able to upgrade the OS, either. What's the end result? Apple sells shiny new computers to the Apple faithful fairly regularly (at least, those who wish to keep their systems up to date). Of course, this also means that Apple does not have to worry about shipping their latest OS with a huge number of drivers so that they can control the hardware and drivers effectively and provide the "it just works" experience they brag about. As noted, it just works as long as you keep the whole eco-system up to date. Try connecting a ten year old printer to a new Mac!
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