There are some interesting ideas and recommendations on hardware, but what surprises me is that there is no mention whatsoever on what your sister wants or needs to run in terms of applications. Personally, I would make sure I understood what she wanted to run in terms of applications, and coupled with her own preferences and experiences with other hardware, then make a recommendation on which type of notebook to buy. It could very well be the case that the type of applications she needs to run are only available on one platform. Typical users spend time running applications, and in the end, pay little attention to the subtle variations in CPU speeds. In terms of the hardware itself, make sure that the display is suitable to her needs and expectations, and that she is comfortable in the feedback of the keyboard when running the applications she'll be spending most of her time using, and then that, along with budget, will help narrow down the choice in hardware.

I think the question at the end of the post, "... AI is getting just a little bit too commonplace?" isn't relevant to using AI to solve a Sudoku puzzle. I thought part of the definition of AI was the ability for a system and/or application to dynamically adapt and learn and apply new rules based on previous input criteria and patterns where no known patterns exist? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence). Since each valid Sudoku puzzle should have one and only one solution, there are different well defined algorithms and or approaches to solve a Sudoku puzzle solely on the correct application of logical rules, does this really count as AI?

Nonetheless, I wonder if the Google Goggle Sudoku Solver was implemented by Eugene Varshavsky? ( Fraud Suspected At Sudoku Championship: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114215648) {:-)