Well to be honest with you, I really don't think that the DVD camcorders are really as easy to use at all. I don't know if you mother is going to be wanting to put the video on her computer at all to do some basic editing, but even if she isn't, they end up being a huge pain the butt. In order to save money over time alot of people like to buy the memorex dvds not name brand and I have never seen a single customer have success with this.
The mini dvds also run into a problem with the actual DVD player. Not all DVD players can read the mini dvd format and this has been known to a problem as well.
To be honest with you, my choice for camcorder, which really isn't that much more, are the flash camcorders. These type of camcorders can 1) get you more than just 30 minutes of video because they take memory cards (just like cameras) and are really easy to get the video onto your computer and then you can burn them onto full DVD. If you don't want to download the video to a computer there are units like the sony dvd direct system that you can hook the camcorder up to and it will do the job.
hopefully this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions
