It really depends on your budget but the biggest single price issue is screen size - the best deals are for 15.6 screens but if she wants something larger or smaller then the prices for decent machines go up wildly. Look for a powerful processor with a good GPU that has dedicated RAM, as much non-graphics RAM as you can afford and x64 Windows 7 with good build quality and you should have a machine which will perform well and last a long time. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ is really handy for checking on what's good/not for processor and GPU deals Both Lenovo and Samsung make excellent machines which both look good (which could be important, quite a few of my female friends use Samsung) and have great build quality

The SSL service only seems to work with https://www.google.com/ attempting https://www.google.co.uk/ or .de .it .com.au etc lands you back at http://www.google.whatever/

If you had the experience I've had, watching my father die from cancer, you would understand that after a certain point the patient is no longer able to make rational decisions. The long term effects of the morphine, chemo drugs, and the metastases of the cancer often render the sufferer distressingly incompetent.

This is from a new york times story: "Of the 12,700 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration consumer complaints analyzed [about unintended acceleration] by The Times, the Ford Motor Company had the most, about 3,500. Toyota ranked second, with about 3,000 complaints, but those were linked to far more accidents — 1,000 — compared to 450 crashes for Ford. All told, from 2000 through 2009, Toyota had one speed-control crash complaint per 20,454 vehicles sold in the United States. Ford had one complaint per 64,679 vehicles. Honda had one per 70,112 and G.M. one per 179,821." Even if you're a sceptic this figures suggest there is a problem!

Who said it was their traffic in the first place?!

I don't subscribe to the dark side theory you espouse (though the likes of murdoch are pretty cynical), the truth seems to be the overwhelming majority of people don't seem to want in-depth reporting on the issues or investigative reporting, they want Britney tearing her hair out in public and the latest scandal from pop idol or big brother or whatever nonsense is on TV. Ultimately news organizations supply what the majority of consumers demand. The NY times has a bigger problem, in that a good deal of it's readers don't live in new york and can't buy the paper (like me). I love the reporting, it's a great read but I don't read it often enough to want a subscription and the only time I do read it is through Google or through the iPhone app - I cant be bothered to sort through the website to find the interesting content - the app is way better. They are a business, they need to get paid, the less people pay the less we get - it is that simple. I think the news media's attitude to Google News is pretty silly, maybe I would consider a subscription to Google news, I use that often enough to justify the money and then maybe we have a spotify for News. Maybe that's the answer. This isn't going to happen though because it would kill of the paper's brand identity and that's part of the news media's problem with Google. It's going to be an unpopular opinion on here though!

I don't think it's a belief that MMR is bad that people are clinging to so much as taking a risk judgement. The world has been subjected to so many drugs which, while approved for use by scientists and government, turn out to be killers that many perfectly rational people refuse to believe the scientific evidence and don't want to take any risk with their children's long term heath. To name a few:- Thalidomide (birth abnomalaties), Redux (heart valve disease), Vioxx (increased the risks of heart attack and stroke), Seldane (fatal heart-rhythm irregularities), Posicor [Mibefradil] (caused toxic levels of 25 different drugs to build up in the body), Rezulin (sudden liver failure), Duract (liver toxicity), Baycol (rhabdomyolysis, which can lead to kidney failure), Zelnorm (increased risk of heart attacks and stroke), Just one of these, Vioxx is suspected of causing 27,000 deaths.

Agreed it's horrifying! I think most organised efforts like this require a clear distinctions so people can make clear choices and that's not what happens in UK politics. We have a choice between two centre right parties who spend a lot of time and effort trying to criticise each other despite the fact that they largely agree on the important stuff and would mostly make the same decisions in the same way using the same advisor's all things being equal. It's very hard to get excited about that!