LynLyn leaveme.alone@spammfree wrote:
OK - first let's establish that I am a technophobic middle aged mum who
knows not a lot about computer hardware......my daughter has come home from
school and requested the purchase of a memory stick to make life easy
transfering info from our home PC to school and vice-versa for projects.

First, 'memory stick' is a (sony?) trademark, that is a type of removable
memory that is used by sony (and other products).
It tends to be more expensive for the capacity, though it can be plugged into
a PC through an inexpensive adaptor.

An example of what you're probably looking for can be found by going to
http://www.ebuyer.com/
On the menu bar at the left of the page, near the top, click "flash memory"
Now "USB Flash drives".
"Show all in this subcategory" (at the top),

Many of the products shown will have free shipping.

Depending on what she's doing, the first (6 quid, 64MB (MB is a measure
of capacity) one may even be adequate.

Daughter may also want to store music on it, in which case that size would
only fit an album or so on.

USB 1.1 is an older design of connector and will write this size of disk
in a minute or two.
USB 2 can often be several times faster (it can be plugged into the same
socket, but the slowest link will determine the speed)

You can get devices of this type with up to 1000MB (1GB) of storage, for
around 50 quid.

Alternatively, electronics - portable audio/mp3

These are 'mp3 players', and will play/store music.
Many of these will also store data.

Generally anything with 'iPod' on it is very desirable, and also very
expensive.

Something like order code 81583 (Ebuyer 256MB MP3 player) is much, much
cheaper, this one at 30 quid, which will work to store music on.
Or 78183, which comes with FM radio, twice the memory, and voice recording
for about 50 quid.
(as an example of iPod pricing, the iPod Shuffle (no voice/FM/display) is
16 quid more)

Hope this helps.