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"'Joe User' doesn't want to understand documentation. He wants to plug it in and have it work NOW."

In that case, he's in for a rude awakening -- because even if he gets a system with MS Windows pre-loaded he's going to run into some things that simply don't work "NOW", and require some fiddling. Meanwhile, you can get systems with Linux distributions pre-loaded that work at least as well, so the gap in usability in which you seem to have absolute faith, and believe with all your heart, is looking pretty scant.


"he can't be troubled with something as cryptic and archaic as a 'command prompt'."

Who said anything about a "command prompt"? Use xman for those manual pages and whatever editor you like for the config file you need. Here are a couple images of what xman looks like in my window manager:

http://sob.apotheon.org/img/demo/xman_browse.png
http://sob.apotheon.org/img/demo/xman_help.png

What could be simpler? It'd be nice if MS Windows' help system was anywhere near as easy to use and well-organized as the online Unix manual.