Psychic Java, Office 2k7, and Vista Simplicity

And so I Just booted into XP for the first time in about 2 months in order to take a better look at Office 2007. As soon as I've logged in, the Sun Java updater alerts me that a new version of Java is available and asks me whether I'd like to claim my free copy of Open Office.

Anyone else find this a more than creepy co-incidence. I should state for the record that I use OpenOffice for most of my offce software needs other than offering tech support. I am however quite impressed with the 'Presenter View' functionality of PowerPoint 2007. It's well thought out and the ability to have notes and silides on the primary display and just slides (or a blank screen) on the secondary display is really handy.
And this is where things get interesting. My Mother has decided she wants to use some form of digital slides and a projector as part of her religious fanaticism. This involved buying a new laptop. After much head-scratching and experimenting, I discovered that Vista can in most circumstances detect a new display the instant it is plugged in and offer a dialogue offering to clone the display or add it to the extended desktop. It just works. I've not managed to find a sequence of events that break it.
Of course it's never that simple and after assembling a nice slideshow containing a number of artistic representation of an unfortunate person who may or may not be mad, the son of an advanced extra-terrestrial, or a necromancer being nailed (or tied with string, as some would have it,) to a cross, and getting my mother to practice with the projector, it seems to have all gone tits up. I have failed to reproduce this problem and have come to the conclusion that the Vista experience is too simple for a number of users used to the annoying and braindead functionality of previous versions of NT.
What gets me really down is the complete failure of the Linuxen I have tested to cope with multiple displays of differing resolution, and the lack of a presenter view in KOffice and OpenOffice. If anyone knows of anything open source with equivalent functionality, please let me know.