The stock model? I REALLY don't recommend that she stays with the stock hard drive, as it is 5400RPM, meaning you get speeds of around 50 MBps, which is horrible (a normal hard drive goes to around 100 MBps, a SATA SSD (the regular ones) goes to around 500 MBps, and a PCIe SSD (those in most Macs) go to around 1 GBps). If possible, get an SSD, or at the very least a fusion drive.
Yes, I am going to try to convince her. That would mean a different means of payment though since it is going to be financed by someone else who has an account where she is planning on getting it which is not through Apple. I'll see if she can somehow finance it through Apple to get the better drive.
May I ask where do you live? Apple does actually offer financing in many countries, and in the US, up to 18 months, so you may want to take a look at that.
The OP seems to be looking at the 21.5" model, which does not have upgradable RAM in any shape or form.
8 gigs is more than enough for most photoshop users. And if down the road she starts doing things more demanding, it's cheap and super simple to add in more. The hdd is going to slow things down a bit, I'd suggest the fusion drive if at all possible.
Then again, if you're tech savy enough, it's not that difficult to remove and replace the harddrive with a hybrid drive you can pickup elsewhere dirt cheap. It's not EASY by any means, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who has never taken a computer apart before. But the harddrive is something you can replace later should you want to.
Avoid the 1.6 GHz model at all costs. It's pretty much the performance of a MacBook Air.
Sweet, but the same thing still applies, upgrade to the 256GB SSD for excellent storage speeds.
Since budget is a real issue, I highly suggest getting the fusion drive. You can get far more storage space for your money and the performance is going to be next to nothing different for most tasks. For someone like me I don't mind having external storage but ugh those ssds fill up so fast.
