#1 Linux is a choice, our friend Zubin can set her up with a Red Hat or another flavor of Linux install. It should avoid the missing memory issues; however, it won't run her current Windows software without WINE, VMWare, WIn4Lin, etc. With the addiational software, it should be able to run most of what she has now. On the down side, it will be a learning curve for her to adapt to a new OS, and a Windows in a box type of emulation to run her current software. On the up side, it has VI built into the OS bundle, and won't get the memory leaks.

#2 Newer version of Windows, it will require new hardware and a new OS license. It should get rid of some of the memory leaks, but Windows XP is still flawed somewhat.

#3 She can keep what she has for now and reboot several times a day or more when memory resources get low enough to trigger her system monitor or TweakRAM. A Band-Aid fix, but for free. Can't beat the price of that. I still suffer from 98, and one of these days I'm going to install XP Pro on it the right way. Right now I have 98SE and XP Pro on the same drive, but different directories. I learned from that, and when I get the time, I'll reformat my drive and put 98 on C: and XP on D: and be done with it.

#4 She can get a low cost used Macintosh, maybe a used G3 500Mhz iMac for under $499, and use MacOS 9.X and then later upgrade the hardware to run OSX. Eudora exists for MacOS just as it exists for Windows, so does Opera and others. While MacOS 9.X doesn't seem to suffer the same exact problems as Windows, it would be a better environment. She does have a Mac background of using them in a previous job. But the problem is going to be finding one for cheap, maybe an auction site or a Mac Dealer? With the almost $500 cost, she could get a very good Pentium 4 or AMD based system with XP Pro on it built for her clocked at over 1 Ghz (1000Mhz).