I am going to give my mother a laptop with Xubuntu installed on her birthday next week.
Interestingly, this was her first real computer experience. While I could get to fix it, my cousin let her use a Windows 7 laptop. There were plenty of complaints from her about how unfriendly, unpredictable and annoying the interface was. It was kind of funny to hear that since usually you hear the reverse (ex-Windows users complain about Ubuntu GUI).