The continuing antics of a frustrating household

My uncle bought my grandmother a computer. He's determined to haul her into the email age, and she's game for it in an abstract kind of way. Guess who gets to set the whole thing up.

In related news, Windows Vista is a terrible piece of shit.

I want to do two things:

1) Eliminate the login screen, given that there is only one user account on this computer, and have it pull up the desktop immediately upon power-up.

2) Have two programs start up on launch.

Ideally, I'd also like to have 3) an automatic email sign-in and download for Yahoo!Mail.

None of these would be the slightest issue if I had a Mac to work with. I'd be done in ten minutes. I would also be able to make it visually appealing, take away about 80% of the damn clutter on this screen (hell, half of it wouldn't be there in the first place), and whip up a desktop image that had handy instructions like "CLICK HERE FOR MAIL==>" in half again that time.

Meanwhile, this thing asks for two separate confirmation windows to rename an alias. Is this supposed to be virus "protection"? You have to be kidding me.

Don't know why I'm bothering, it's not like this thing is going to get any use anyway.