Mystery explained. I had not yet activated the product on that laptop. When I went to progress through to loading source code, there was a window that popped up behind the one I was in. When I found that I was able to complete activation and then was taken to a 'skeleton' source code example/sample. It has nothing to do with being connected to the 'net or not.
Now that I am moving along, I find I can dbl-clk source code and Visual COBOL starts up and I am able to edit.
Thanks again for helping me think about this.