Please help me to buy a Laptop for her

Moppie wrote in post #14944504
You download it.

About the only software you can't get by downloading now is the operating system. But that can be installed from a USB stick.

Thanks Moppie

Merlin_AZ wrote in post #14944564
If she isn't going to need an i7, get the i5 and save a few bucks.

Good point. Thanks Merlin!

tim wrote in post #14944660
You don't even need an i5, an dual core i3 with a small SSD will be easy fast enough, light, and will have great battery life. I see little to gain by having 4 cores.

Thanks Tim. I will check to see how much it would turn out on the best i3 + SSD

Fry's have the 13" MacBook Air on sale for $999 ... link to 13" MacBook

Great little machine. I bought one for my wife and then a Retina MacBook for myself ( which promptly crashed 3 times in 3 days ). I returned the Retina and purchased a MacBook Air from Apple, but opted to pay a lot more $$ to get 8GB RAM, only to support CS6.

Check out the reviews and the performance of the Air ... it's quite impressive. SSD is blazing fast and don't overlook the pair of USB 3.0 ports. I can hook up external USB 3.0 drives and get performance similar to internal drives.

The MacBook will have far greater resale value after a year or two also. I would think that the $999 spent today would still be worth $600+ in a couple of years. $800 spent on a Dell today will be have nowhere near that value ... maybe $300 ??

I'm not a Mac fanboy ... my desktop system for serious work is a PC's ( 2600K, 32GB ram, SSD, RAID 5 Storage, dual 24" monitors ) but the little Air impresses me no end for weight, battery life, portability and usability. My "work" laptop is a Dell XPS13 which positively sucks in comparison to the Air.

Thanks everyone for your help!!
I can't find anything with SSD included that is not near a $1000 so I ended up with purchase a Dell Inspiron 14Z for $515 (to my door). It comes with 6GB Ram, 750GB 7200 SATA, 2nd Gen I5, 6 Cell battery, 14". I will ride it out until the warranty is done then maybe switch the SATA to a SSD (if it is no longer running fast and smooth as new).

Here is a quick review video:
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=G1tpdVd545o