What do you know about email machines for an older person who doesn't "do" computers?

A friend asked me to pose this question to the Fluther community. Her parents are in their 80s and have a computer that they do not use. She and her sister are thinking about getting them an email machine (apparently works through the phone line) that will print out messages from a pre-approved list of addresses. In this way, they can send photos of the kids etc. and make it easy on the parents.

Have any of you had experience with email only machines? If so, what brands seem to work, what do you recommend or suggest she might want to avoid? Also, do the machines allow the elderly parents to respond via email or do they just print incoming messages?