You're going to end up with your very own hyperwall if you keep that up.

I actually do have multiple monitors on my desktop, but decided not to use my second one because I hardly ever did use it, I might try that piece of software on it though.

I prefer multiple computers over multiple monitors, setting stuff up as an exclusive task is more efficient. Well okay not for power, it's awful for that but I can watch videos or something whilst gaming, compressing video, burning DVDs or anything else that really should be an exclusive task.
I definitely second Avast. I started using it becuse it was the only 64bit antivirus for a while but now I'm impressed enough that my subscription expired norton is gone from my net machine when I can be bothered to uninstall it.

Keep it minimalistic. Any software that she doesn't need means unnecessary work for you.
1. Office. Less often means more here, so if she only writes short essays every now and then consider something like AbiWord. Stay away from OpenOffice, it's a support nightmare. If she needs it, don't be afraid of MSOffice
2. Mail. If she's comfortable with a web interface, don't try to get her to use Thunderbird or the like.
3. Security. AntiVir Personal should fit her needs as it has very few false positives. Use a security rule to forbid launch of the notifier so that she doesn't get a popup on every update.
4. Video Player: Windows Media Player has frequent security issues and the "automatic license download" is a ticking timebomb... if you can get her to use VLC that will save you a lot of nerves lateron.
5. Audio Player: Whatever she feels comfortable with. iTunes seems to be a popular choice right now, but whatever she likes is fine. Stay away from the likes of Foobar: Too many options mean frustrated phone calls.
6. Browser: Microsoft's update policy is really a problem here... It may be tough but try to get her to use an alternative browser. I'd vote for Firefox, but if she's an iTunes and/or Apple fan you might have an easier time convincing her to use Safari. Don't try Opera: Again: Too many options and too many compatibility issues.
Edit: Stay away from the likes of Zone Alarm... too many meaningless popups don't increase security. If anything, it gets people to not read the messages anymore.

Seriously? I've been using and evangelizing OpenOffice for years to all my friends and family. Not one of them has ever had an issue using it once they got past the fact that some menu items are in different places than they are in MS Office. I had even convinced my company to switch the entire business (over 2000 desktops and laptops all over the world) over to OO.o, but MS contracts prevented that from happening for the time being.
What's wrong with Thunderbird? It's a damn sight better than any of the Microsoft offerings.

I second the OpenOffice vote. I have used it and it is a lot better than MS Office. It loads faster, uses less resources (to my knowledge) and it is free.

Nothing's wrong with Thunderbird, I just don't have any experience with Outlook, so I talked about what I knew, which is Thunderbird. It was just an example of a desktop mail app.
About OpenOffice: I use it as well, but well, it's an ugly beast. Responsiveness and performance are like a 1998 Java app. Add compatibility issues with MSOffice in the mix (I know it isn't their fault and that they actually did an amazing job, but if a word that belongs onto page one wraps onto page two, I still get a phone call from whoever I recommended OOo to) and you got something that you just don't want to support. I myself frequently switch to AbiWord for simple writing because I just can't bear the slow and clunky interface of OOo anymore.

I'll third, OpenOffice is great. I've been using it at home as my office suite of choice for about two years now. I will say that the Writer portion of it is the most robust; If you need spreadsheets and the like you might want to find an alternate program for that, as, in my experience at least, their excel equivalent isn't *quite* up to snuff yet... at least, last time I checked (admittedly about a year ago).

meh, she uses yahoo webmail. but I will most definitely consider abiword. she also likes to use the netflix streaming thing, which unfortunately requires ie7.

What version of OO.o are you using? The latest version (3.x) has eliminated most, if not all of the performance issues and the only document compatibility issues I have encountered (so far) are some Excel macros.

Check the Firefox addon/plugin database. There may or may not be a plugin that will allow her to use netflix without IE...It's worth a shot..

Not if you use IETab in Firefox. Netflix works great with that.

Version 3.0 of OpenOffice (just remembered to update to 3.0.1). I should probably add that I usually work with long documents. 50 to 150 pages and relatively complex formating. It really slows down to a crawl, and not just on my PC.
If you don't want MSOffice (I don't, it tries to integrate itself into the OS on a level that I'm not comfortable with... and besides, it's too expensive) and you still need all those features, then there's no alternative. But the average user just wants to write a formatted letter every now and then, and for that OOo is simply overkill. It's like trying to give GIMP to my mother.

how easily could I integrate ietab without interupting her "user experience?"