Well, I would be willing to help out as well.  I was bored this weekend, as all of my kids sports tournaments were rained out here in Arizona, so I went to Frys Electronics, and bought all the parts to build a basic computer system.  I spent a total of $250+Tax for ALL of the parts needed for a computer, less the monitor.  I was able to get an AMD Duron 1.6 GHZ system with a PC Chips motherboard for $39 on sale.  Even got a 16X DVD player for $19.  And an ATI 32MB AGP Video Card for $39.  A 40GB Hard Drive for $49. 256MB PC2700 DDR Ram,  An Air Link 56K Data/Fax Modem for $9.99.   CPU Fan for $10,  and an extra cooling fan for the case for another $9.99.   The motherboard has onboard LAN, and Audio as well.  The case was $24.99 and had 2 USB ports included, giving me a total of 6 USB ports. Keyboard, Mouse, etc all included.  Not bad for a basic system.  I also threw on WIN XP Professional.  Tested out the system for a few days, a it flat out screams, even after loading all the basic programs on it, Office XP, Adobe Reader, etc, and all the other stuff needed.  I spent about 4 hours total on it, and just over $250.   So when you think about it, it would not take much to put one together for her.
 
 
YBIC
Mark Copfer