Hey Margaret,
a few months ago, I was helping out an older couple who had just bought their first computer with XP installed, but they did have a bit of computer experience so they knew some basics. It's surprisingly hard to teach basic things! I was trying to move slowly so that they could see what I was doing and tell them what was going on at the same time while I configured things, but then they asked how I could do everything so fast, so I guess my idea of slow was a little different from their's

however, for my situation it was easier because of the fact that I'd already had about 9 months worth of heavy XP usage behind me. as for resources, I did some searching on google and I agree with you, it's hard to find any tutorials or anything like that for newbies, they almost all assume you're at a "intermediate" level. I did find some basic video tutorials
here though (they have a list of free ones, but the rest you have to pay to watch)
Good luck!
- David