I concur.

He was ranting about Apple even though he didn't use any of their services or products? And I'm quite sure doing so would've saved him a lot of time and trouble.

I use Windows as well as OS X, and, knowing both sides, OS X is just so much more comfortable to use. Especially for people without previous knowledge, such as my mom or my sister. I did install OS X on my sister's Eee PC a while back and it runs great, she's never had any trouble with it. I'm confident it would've worked with his mother too. (Though buying a MacBook is much less trouble than hacking OS X on any other system)

Macs are cool, and if the old folks in the park where mom lived all had Macs, I'd be buying her one. I'm hoping that she'll get a lot of support from her peers - especially since I'm 1200 miles away.

Norton was probably the worst choice on my part, and it came from habit. I've used Norton for a long time, and it has a good reputation. But you're right: there are much better options for security software.

Can you return it?

I gave my mom a Macbook 5 years ago and she's never had to ask anyone for support.

Ditto this. I got tired of constantly tech supporting my mom on her Dell, and gave her my old MBP. Spent 30 minutes walking her through the OS X differences, and really haven't heard from her since. She uses it all the time now to create and give presentations, along with the standard e-mail/web/etc...

Probably not. I spent all day "configuring" it -- resizing the icons and text size, doing all that install stuff, imaging the drive, etc. Plus it's shipped.

How old was your mom when you got it for her? Did she have previous computer experience?

She was 55 and uses a PC at work.

I think that's a little different. My mom is 75 and the last keyboard she used was a selectric typewriter sometime around 1990.

So we're starting completely from zero.