Pester her as long as you have to. The internal hard drive just died, so I'm looking to replace it with a drive maximized for video work. The hard drive that came stock with the 8500 wasn't fast enough for digital video. What you really need for digital video is an array, which is two or more Macs striped together in software so that they appear as a single hard drive. But maybe that's more than you want to deal with at this point.
Digital video costs serious dough.
The mouse tracks fine vertically, no problem, but horizontally, not so good. If you look inside there, it's one long plastic shaft and the roller, and I guess it's possible for that shaft to get worn and to stick. If you really hate the round mouse, there's a clip-on extender from MacAlly, I think, which makes it feel like a regular mouse you're used to. The new optical mouse from Microsoft, some people are really liking it. Can track on any surface with great precision.