I actually started teaching my missus (then girfriend) on a CD32 with an 8Mb expansion and 2Gb hd. I taught her fundamentals of the workbench, how to use the shell, the various apps I used (Final Writer, Wordworth various games, how Miami worked, Aweb, AmIRC, YAM etc etc etc). For months I thought I was getting nowhere, until one day I was stuck on something stupidly trivial, and she came over and performed it without any prompting.
I also got her to setup a mac emulator for my A1200, which she did without too much hassle.
I gave her an A3000 for her birthday, she still has it but uses her PC more these days as the A3000's PSU has long since passed its sell by date.
Two things to note about my missus: She used Windows prior to us meeting up and could just about get around it. When going back to Windows from the Amiga, she found that a fair bit of what I'd taught her in AmigaOS (With Opus Magellen 2) could easily be used in windows. And Two: Her confidence in trying to do things she wasn't sure of shot off the scale!
These days you can sit her at a completely foriegn OS (Say... Morphix - a linux distro) and within an hour or so she has a fundamental understanding of day to day operations and the confidence to look deeper if needs arise.
She still prefers windows, but will happily go on BeOS or Zeta (which are the other two OS's I have active atm) and use them like a pro.
Soooo, in short, do what you're doing now mate, although its a long slog, the long term benefits CANNOT be understated, I just feel sorry for the computer users of tomorrow, who will loose the valuable lessons we gained by using a truly barebones OS such as AmigaOS on low end Amigas.
