First thing...Don't do anything rash or foolish like throw the computer out the window 
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Second thing, I've been exactly where you are, in August '09 my wife got a Macbook Air because it was a really good price (<$1,000) for a new one. I couldn't stand it. I thought it looked nice, but I didn't get it, I couldn't get the Network to work, it did not play well with my printer, nor with my wife's and my desktop. It was a stupid pain in the neck.
Now, I've been using computers since loading up on the 8088 and growing up playing games and using DOS, the whole thing, when it came to computer literacy I'm not top of the line, but I did actually get paid to help out with tech support while I was in law school.
So I didn't get it...until I did, I tried installing Windows 7 on the MacBook Air, but it didn't work because I didn't have a superdrive, with some googling I found some instructions using parellels to load up Win 7 and then load into terminal using the system disk and basically rewriting some instructions so I could load Windows 7.
Then I got a little more into terminal...and it's amazing what can be done in terminal, you can hack into cd images and change them into iso images it's great fun...about the same time, I figured out more consistently how to load up the network and other settings.
It's not going to take a week, it just isn't...If you don't have the patience for 4-5 months it might not work, but it'll take eventually. Microsoft Works or something similar is not preloaded so you don't have a word processor (other than textedit which is more like notepad then workpad). Open Office is a good way to go.
This is so weird for me to say having been a Windows guy my whole life, but I got an iMac for Christmas and I absolutely love it, I find it particularly fun using VirtualBox (for free) to load up my old Windows ME O/S so I can play X-Wing and X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter...these are things that you can do with a PC too, but, it's clean, contained, and sharp on the Mac. At 22, speed and graphics was everything, now, the ascetics of the Mac are just oh so sharp.
So my thoughts, it gets better, really it does, until you don't realize what happened to you, then you work on an old PC and put together all the parts to fix the bad video card and Windows re requires you to authorize and tells you to pay money for a new key cause the old one is in use, but it isn't because that computer died, because something was junk, so you have to call the Windows authorization center....Yeah, did that too this Christmas...I can tell you which was a lot more enjoyable.
.Second thing, I've been exactly where you are, in August '09 my wife got a Macbook Air because it was a really good price (<$1,000) for a new one. I couldn't stand it. I thought it looked nice, but I didn't get it, I couldn't get the Network to work, it did not play well with my printer, nor with my wife's and my desktop. It was a stupid pain in the neck.
Now, I've been using computers since loading up on the 8088 and growing up playing games and using DOS, the whole thing, when it came to computer literacy I'm not top of the line, but I did actually get paid to help out with tech support while I was in law school.
So I didn't get it...until I did, I tried installing Windows 7 on the MacBook Air, but it didn't work because I didn't have a superdrive, with some googling I found some instructions using parellels to load up Win 7 and then load into terminal using the system disk and basically rewriting some instructions so I could load Windows 7.
Then I got a little more into terminal...and it's amazing what can be done in terminal, you can hack into cd images and change them into iso images it's great fun...about the same time, I figured out more consistently how to load up the network and other settings.
It's not going to take a week, it just isn't...If you don't have the patience for 4-5 months it might not work, but it'll take eventually. Microsoft Works or something similar is not preloaded so you don't have a word processor (other than textedit which is more like notepad then workpad). Open Office is a good way to go.
This is so weird for me to say having been a Windows guy my whole life, but I got an iMac for Christmas and I absolutely love it, I find it particularly fun using VirtualBox (for free) to load up my old Windows ME O/S so I can play X-Wing and X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter...these are things that you can do with a PC too, but, it's clean, contained, and sharp on the Mac. At 22, speed and graphics was everything, now, the ascetics of the Mac are just oh so sharp.
So my thoughts, it gets better, really it does, until you don't realize what happened to you, then you work on an old PC and put together all the parts to fix the bad video card and Windows re requires you to authorize and tells you to pay money for a new key cause the old one is in use, but it isn't because that computer died, because something was junk, so you have to call the Windows authorization center....Yeah, did that too this Christmas...I can tell you which was a lot more enjoyable.
