New laptop

Wade & I have a new laptop. It's our first laptop together (aww). It's actually Wade's first laptop, and his first new computer since 1993. Seriously. (He's been using my old laptop, but it died a few months ago.)

Anyway, this new laptop is a Gateway laptop and came loaded with Microsoft Vista. We purchased Office 2007 for it. I'm so lost!

If anyone out there can help me, I'd appreciate it! I will list my problems (relating to the laptop, of course!).

Today, here's what happened:
-If I wanted to type quotation marks, I couldn't type them. When in Word, I can type shift+' and quotation marks will be made. However, when I'm not in Word (such as in typing a blog post or using gmail to send an email), when I type that, it comes out with an accented e (un accent aigu, for those who speak French).
-If I wanted to put in a question mark, I couldn't type it. When in Word, I can type shift+/ to create question marks. However, when I'm not in Word, typing that combination puts in an upper-case E with an accent (another accent aigu).
So in order to put quotation marks or question marks into the post, I had to type it in Word, then cut and paste it into blogger or gmail or facebook. Not exactly convenient.

Yesterday, here's what happened:
-If I wanted to type an apostrophe, out can a lower case accented e. (I think it was another accent aigu, but I can't remember now). Notice how on Friday, I had few contractions? Go back and look. That's because I COULDN'T TYPE CONTRACTIONS. ARG! That meant I also couldn't denote possession. (How on earth do I refer to Wade's car if I can't put in an apostrophe? I put in a backwards apostrophe: those were working.) And I was too frustrated to type it in Word, where I could type apostrophes, then copy it into blogger or gmail.

I'm having other problems, but these two are frustrating me the last few days. Anyone have any ideas on why I can't always type quotation marks or question marks or apostrophes?

Note: sometimes I can, but most of the time, I can't. And I don't know if I am doing something to turn it on/off, or what's going on.

A little help?