It's not just her. I tried the same thing with my mom. I showed her the iPad, thinking it might make a good replacement for her aging XP laptop (that never moves off the desk). She hated it and didn't get it. She especially hated the virtual keyboard.
Oddly, the same thing happened when she ended up with the XP laptop a few years ago. Her desktop had died, so I tried to show her how good OSX was on my Powerbook. I showed her the Dock, how easy it was to change stuff, etc. After all that, the first thing she said was "where is the Start button?". I just told her to buy a Dell with the employee discount from her office.