I bought a Mac laptop a year ago for the same reason you are looking now. I just could not obtain a top of the line Windoze machine anywhere. Walked into an Apple store and walked out with the top of the line Powerbook with EVERYTHING in it. Love it.
A couple months ago my PC desktop crashed. I now have a gleaming dual processor G5 with a knock-your-eyes-out 23" cinema display. This thing hondles 150MB Photoshop files like they were word processor docs.
Forget Windoze. Get new software. You will not be sorry.
Oh, yeah did I mention you no longer have to worry about viri and spyware?
Thanks. It seems for the limited word processing, web surfing, and wireless connectivity she enjoys now, the Mac would do just fine. It is only a few web downloaded games that she even runs anything else under Windows.