Again, thanks. I had also spotted the Fuji FinePix 2600 at £229 on the Web. But we are (she is) not in a hurry and we can still do more research. I'll try to push her into your price range since the usefulness of the kit gets better.
Incidentally, I do favour optical zoom as you get better definition by using all the pixels for a smaller image. Digital zoom does much the same as software zoom on the computer. However digital zoom is good if you're printing straight off the camera.