Friday evening open thread

I'm finally setting up my new VAIO desktop, and, man, how do normal human beings who aren't somewhat techies get these things to work? I am struggling with figuring out how to get my Net connection working, the wirelss mouse, and I can't even find a simple answer to whether you can or can't hook up a desktop to a wireless Internet connection (I lost my ethernet cable - anyone know if new desktops can access wifi?) I hate this thing. Again, I ask, how do non-techies deal with this stuff? And, and the instructions suck. Big surprise there :-)