[island911]

Nice; an i7 processor! Does she need that?

I went with the Dell because the super bright display. (hard to find on the Thinkpads) Also, the Dell is not that typical high gloss screen, which also helps readability outside in the sun. --not all XT's have the daylight display.

i will also suggest that you get her going on OneNote. --it's great for classes. She can take notes while recording lecture. Then later, just point to a note/graph/diagram and it will recall the audio of when the note/graph/diagram was created. (among other productive tools for class)

There are some convertibles w/o the pen. I really like the pen based versions. (palm-hits go away) And I use Evernote's RitePen, which allows text input anywhere one the screen. (fast)