newbie: excel connection? other ad-hoc query windows client?

[ODBC] Snapshot 08.01.0006
Windows XP Pro 2002, SP 1
MS Excel 2002 (10.2614.2625)
Server: Postgresql-7.4RC2 on linux
[linux hacker, I've never used ODBC before, not much windows expertise]

I'm struggling to understand how ODBC is/can be used.

GOAL: I want some easy-to-use windows GUI client that would let
occasional users do ad-hoc viewing, data extraction, plotting,
including a few simple joins(maybe in some transparent way).  The
users are hardware engineers, not software/db geeks(like me), and do
not know SQL.

We have *some* canned queries packaged up, but there are too many
slices/joins that users may want.

I had thought to use Excel, since everyone here knows it, and I had
heard that it could access sql databases via odbc.  I was able to get
a single table loaded into an Excel sheet, though the data doesn't seem
to be right.  Does my table with 34862 rows freak out Excel or ODBC?
We will often be dealing with tables of ~10M rows.

Is there some other windows client (preferably free or part of a
default windows installation) that would do what I need?

-- George Young
--
"Are the gods not just?"  "Oh no, child.
What would become of us if they were?" (CSL)