I spoke above of my effort to connect "The Princess" through her new Windows Vista laptop to an Airport Express. Apple has still not offered configuration software for Vista, but someone described a way to load a working program into Vista. I had to follow these steps, but it did work and I now have a working AE setup tool on her laptop. Also, search for the beta version of Bonjour--it also works on Vista for printer support.
Here's the work-around answer:
Apple - Support - Discussions - Install Airport Utility 5.0 without the ...