Is this why I've been a Mac person the last 10 years?

I bought my partner a refurbished Thinkpad for Christmas last year.  He's a tough person to buy for and I thought I'd finally triumphed: now he could play PC games (while I vid!  it was going to be perfect!).  

He played a few games for two or three weeks, then stopped using the computer.  :(

So, this week I decided to commandeer it.  I started by installing a fresh version of Windows 7, taking advantage of my last quarter of student status to get it free from my university.  Installation went fine, but now the damn thing won't connect to the internet.  Apparently there is a problem with a network adapter or a driver or something.  Windows helpfully suggests that, if drivers aren't properly installed, I connect to the internet to see if updates are available.

I've found some instructions but they all involve clicking on various icons or services that don't exist.  Maybe because the driver isn't installed? 

I generally don't take a position on the whole Mac vs Windows thing, mainly cause I'm not that impressed with Macs and I clearly don't know much about PCs, but this is really a bad start.