Also what is your desired spending range?

Note that if she's a student she can get a discount so you might want to consider
offering to just pay for her to buy it herself.

I'll have to look into the student discount. She'll definitely want a laptop. I am redeeming my amex points and can shop in their own store, or on Amazon. I have a lot of points saved up. They offer the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. I don't know which might be better for her purposes (graphic design). Is the amount of Flash storage very important?

As far as flash drive size if she does lots of video or gaming she'll need a bigger one, a
smaller one is probably fine if all she wants it for is static images.

Note that is she spends a lot of time in front of it doing graphics she'll probably have
an opinion on the glossy vs matte screen issue (some people find glossy screens very
fatiguing after awhile), also she'll probably have an opinion as to the minimum screen
size necessary to do the work she does.

I do suggest discussing the purchase with her even if it does spoil the surprise.

This computer is going to be a wonderful resource and tool for her for some time to come. You're giving her a truly wonderful gift.

The best is to talk it over with her and make sure she gets what she wants within your budget. She will know a lot about it and have a lot of opinions.

I work on a Mini with a separate 27" screen. Couldn't afford the Mac monitor when my 20" Cinema decided it didn't like to work during cold weather, so I got a $300 screen from Staples. Not as good as the Mac screen, but size is great.

RAM is the key. Get the max. Big screen is also essential. So, I would stay away from a laptop.

need to look at complicated document on a separate screen.

For that purpose, I have an additional monitor that I plug into the laptop.

100 megs before layering. I have to upgrade, and want a mini, but apple told me the mini won't work with large photoshop files because it doesn't have a graphics card. I was a photographer, use a hasselblad so my files are large. I'm really interested in seeing you're a designer using a mini. Any problems? They told me at the apple store I would kill the mini in 2 years, but it is in my budget range.

I'm on my second Mini (still have and use the first) and have never had any problems working with large PhotoShop files. I did just upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM because I worked on one PS project that severely taxed the paltry 4 gigs I had. I'd have to go back and look to see just how large this file was with all its layers, but it was mucho megs.

Definitely spring for the maximum RAM and fastest processor, though.

I use a 21" iMac which certainly is plenty sufficient for what I do -- which is mainly print.

The big expense for her will be the programs that she'll need -- Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Distiller, InDesign or Quark Xpress, Microsoft Office, a font manager like Suitcase Fusion. web design etc. etc.

Those will ad up to MORE than the cost of the computer!!

so does she really need a graphics Mac? If it were my daughter, I'd ask her want she needs.

But to answer your question … for me, RAM and a large screen are vital. I'm a freelance graphic designer/art director using a 27" iMac, 3.06 GHz Core 2 duo with 4 GB of RAM. The machine is 4 1/2 years old, yet handles everything I throw at it -- 124 page catalogs, videos, and even the largest Photoshop files. The OS is Lion. When I replace it -- which should be soon -- it will be with another 27" iMac.

I graduated several years ago as a graphic designer. Just before my final exams, my Mac, which I won't go into great detail about, but will say was a "lemon" was involved in an "internal" electrical fire. Yes, I thought I had a surge protector but was sorrily wrong.

So I asked a mentor what kind of Mac he thought I should buy next and his advice was to buy the very best I could afford. Any mac is suitable for a graphic designer, it just depends on how much your budget allows you to spend and whether or not a lap top vs. a desktop model best suits your daughter's needs.

NOTE: Just wanted to add I'm new here, this being my first post. So if this duplicates what other people have already said, I apologize that I wasn't alert enough to scroll down to see all the responses prior to posting mine.

graphic designer.
dont get the air. it doesnt have the juice. i got the best one they had, the one with the invdia graphics card, 16g ddr3, 2.3g intel i7

remember that every time she processes something that she just did, it takes time. if it takes any longer than it takes her to get to the next task after she hits that key, that is wasted time. that adds up over the course of a project. even at 10 minutes a day, thats over an hour by the end of a week. that is the way a pro looks at their tools.

i spent $3k.

if you really want to be the magic fairy godmother, you might grab her a time machine, too. i know we can all put our stuff on the cloud, but i still like to have it on my desk.
there are cheaper back up drives out there, tho.

i like my macs, but once upon a time i was pc, and always bleeding edge. my mac is better, but there are some pretty good pc's out there these days for a whooooole lot less money.
look at the specs.

to you mom. you deserve a present, too. you should buy yourself something, too.