This is probably the most professionally done resource to learn computer basics. It comes directly from Microsoft at the Digital Literacy site. Here, you’ll find three “curriculum” levels – basic, standard and advanced. Each curriculum level provides a few tutorial videos that will walk the user through a list of lessons. The videos are animated, interactive and very high quality.
The video tutorials will request that you install Silverlight (http://www.silverlight.net/). Obviously, the installation of Silverlight may trip up a true novice, but the installation wizard will guide most any user through the installation process without difficulty.