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Though if selling imaginary world things for real world cash isn't fraud, I have a great vacation home in middle earth to offer you!

I have one too. In LOTRO.

I know what you mean. I left WoW years ago when I saw the writing on the wall. Very expensive monthly fees coupled with increasing dumbing-down of the classes. There was no strategy or techinque. Just stand there and cast damage spells, the same spells, over and over again.

I left for LOTRO. You folks (parent, grandparent) might want to give it a try. I had a (solo) battle against an even-level elite mob there recently that lasted long enough for me to recast spells on a 60 second timeout 3 times, and me as a clothie class. Lot of fun using fear as a minstrel in the water to slow movement, kiting, skillful application of heals and bubbles (temporary health), and all sorts of other fun stuff. And, you know, if that's not your cup of tea there's plenty of easier or harder, solo or group, content to switch to. You can do as much or as little as you want in the different areas. There's almost always 2 or 3 areas that are level-appropriate. Not even counting the Skirmishes or Dungeons. And it seems like there's always something new. I've been playing for years, and I only just discovered the crafting instances buried away in Moria.

LOTRO is free to try. Both PC (Windows) and Mac clients. Good Wine support for older Macs or Linux.

The parts (content) is sold a la cart. (Either for points you collect in-game, for dollars, or subscription if you really want to subscribe.)

I wouldn't mind looking at other MMOs, but even though Macs have Intel chips, not many developers are willing to write native code for Macs. (commence mac vs. pc flame war)

LOTRO has a mac client.

It's free to play. More advanced parts (content) is sold a la cart. (You can earn points in game, spend money, and/or subscribe.)

I like it. Good graphics. The PvE is decent. You actually have strategies other than spam the attack skill. But hey, try it for yourself, for free, and see what you think...

1) Segment your home network so that a compromised windows box can't reach your other computers. Use 2 or more NAT/wired/wireless boxes between your cable-modem and your computers. (I do much the same to keep my wireless and guest traffic away from my personal machines.)

1a) Ideally put a hub in there and silently monitor the network traffic (ON A SECOND MACHINE!) from the WIndows box by port, destination, and TIME OF DAY!

2) Get a bootable CD/DVD of Linux, a 2gig (or larger, though many older computers can't support larger than 2gigs) external drive, and make ntfsclone your friend. ntfsclone runs under linux. I've used it numerous times to back up and restore winNTFS partitions. Nothing like turning back the clock.

3) Restore frequently.

4) Use chrome rather than IE for webbrowsing. Put IE on its most restrictive settings anyway.

5) Watch out the "freebies" and downloadable stuff. To say nothing of drive-bys.

6) Reconsider Macs. They just work. You can get something decent for $1k new, or even $600 new, or for a lot less off cowboom. ($350? Though watch out for older hardware not running the latest versions of OSX.) (Also, you might check on educational pricing. Don't know if Apple does that for grade-school, but they've been lenient in the past.)

N) Graphics are pretty lean on the Lenovo T400 laptop. Processing power is low too. It might work on the lowest settings. Or you might need to consider a desktop. Newegg often has good sales, if you are comfortable putting the parts together. Try: http://hot-deals.org/ or http://slickdeals.net/.

N+1) You might suggest his friends try LOTRO too. It's a lot cheaper without the monthly fee! The recent release (as of last monday) now works with WINE on macs & linux, though you need a patch... And an official mac port is on the way.

from http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/LOTRO_under_Linux_and_Mac_OS/X
DISCLAIMER: This is not for the faint of heart. All of this information is on an as-is basis, no guarantees are made about anything whatsoever and most importantly: IF YOU TRY THIS, YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN! TURBINE DOES NOT, WILL NOT, HAS NEVER AND (probably) WILL NEVER PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR IT! There. If your toaster explodes as a result of this, it's your own fault. The instructions below worked for many people but also failed for a few.

Steam can be a pretty rough, uncoordinated anti-customer service at time. It is by no means even close to a perfect service. What really makes it work is super cheap bundle specials.

The reason some games have a far higher piracy rate than other games, easy, pirates try every game that comes out and the 'majority' of real buyers do not. There are just so, so, so many games out there that no one really has time to play them all, especially if you touch on free stuff like LOTRO http://www.lotro.com/, it can quickly chew up hundreds even thousands of gaming hours.

There is just so much choice out there, a bunch of games are basically getting used by nothing but pirates whilst the average consumer is putting there dollars into just a few select games or in the case of steam a few select gaming bundles (I bought one a few months back and still haven't finished some and haven't even started some others).

So game companies are now being forced by competition to be much more customer orientated, DLC, unless the game is free to start with 'bugger off', idiotic drm forget it and, no resale value get lost.

Everybody I know has been moving over to LotRO

From here:

Anyone can join the game for free as a Free player when LOTRO Free-to-Play is available. You will automatically be upgraded from Free player to Premium player status with your first purchase of Turbine Points in the LOTRO Store.

And for a monthly fee, LOTRO's VIP program offers the best value and the most options for players who like the convenience of having unlimited access to ALL of LOTRO's game content and features. If you are already a subscriber, just maintain your active subscription to be automatically upgraded to VIP!

Plus being a subscriber gets you 6,000 store points a year...

Look here for an idea as to what you can buy.

E.g. More character slots per server, more bags, carry more gold, shared bank, skirmishes, more trait slots, more crafting guilds, destiny points, monster play, customer service, etc.

Does anyone know if that includes expansions, like Mines of Moria?

Expansions and quest areas like Eriador are going to be pay-to-access, and Mines of Moria will still be a separate expansion you have to pay for.
They've outlined their general tiers of use here: http://www.lotro.com/betasignup/vipchart.html

From the free-to-play FAQ:

Q: Will I still be able to play and enjoy the game without buying items from the LOTRO Store, or is that my only option for gaining weapons, armor, potions, and other goodies such as premium loot?

A: The purchase of items in the LOTRO Store is entirely optional. While items in the Store are designed to immediately enhance your in-game experience, premium loot and rare gear are the rewards of adventure and are only obtainable through gameplay.

So no, a real-world "rich person" (as if rich people play online games) will not be able to gain an edge and pwn you.

In Lord of the Rings Online the player instruments can be played using ABC Notation

The kernel should deal with that. If you request some memory address, paging assigns a virtual address for the physical memory so that you can access -any- 4 Gb of data in some order.

In theory, yes. In practice, no. A 32 bit windows machine can't use a 4 gb graphics card at all, because video memory is mapped before other memory and eats into the 4 gb address space for each process. Windows used to allow the use of PAE to allow the 4 gb to be virtualized, but this was disabled due to driver issues. See this for more detail.

I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun? Far too many people get caught up in the constant gear and leveling treadmill to really focus on what should be the goal of the game - enjoying yourself.

On a related note, this system is more or less a direct copy of LotRO's deed system. There's a running commentary on it right over over at the LotRO forums.

That's incorrect (unless I misunderstand you). If you buy the North American client you can play on the North American servers. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=31890