Agree with above..It's an expensive hobby. She may also want to wait for "Open Box" sales at her local shops. That's how I bought my Designer SE which normally went for 7500 but I lucked out with Open Box machine that had very little time on it and only used at shows. So it ended up being 4500 but by the time I got out of there with threads, stablizer, snip scissors etc...Might as well said it cost me full price...
Also really be sure as to how much your going to use it. I decided to buy a cheap machine first to see if I liked it and would use it...Well the cheapest Viking sold a few yrs back was 800 with the ability of only using a 4x4 hoop...4 mths later I upgraded to the SE.
I still use the cheap...HA HA machine but if I'd done my homework and really put some thought into it I'd never would have it.
Another thing is make sure whatever machine she buys it can be upgraded to other computer models...My cheap machine will only operate thru XP so if my old computer which houses the software to run that machine ever goes Bye Bye so does the emb machine...it will not run off all the new computer upgrades...Who Knew...Things you find out after the fact...Now I know the questions to ask.