G3 iMac for Mom? help a newbie

[GbV76]

I was thinking about picking up a G3 iMac for my Mom. I'm a relative newbie, and I was curious about how it will run with OSX. All she'd use it for is surfing the net, email, and playing card games (anyone know of any good ones for OSX btw?). What would it's performance be comparable to in wintel land? And what's the range in performance like from 233 MHz to 450? Thanks for your help!

[Horrortaxi]

It'll do okay as long as you give it enough memory. I suggest at least 256MB. I have 2 233mhz G3s running Jaguar at work and my mom has a 333 iMac running Panther. They're all fine for basic tasks but Panther is a huge imporivement over Jaguar on the iMac.

Comperable to a same age PC running XP performance will be...wait a second, how many 6 year old PCs will run XP? It'll be stable, it'll be fine.

[applemacdude]

Id recommend getting a slot loading imac..with a least 256mb's and at least 450mhz...ebay is your friend

[boristhespider]

If you do get an imac and are going to install panther on it, make sure it has the latest firmware
for that model. I just went through the process of reviving an imac dv that was killed merely by
booting off the panther install disk. Got a message that the firmware was not current and then
rebooted and nothing. Machine would turn on and then shut down after a few seconds. No video, no
chime, nothing.

All is well with the machine now and panther is pretty perky and smooth on the old girl. It should
be fine for your Mom. I also would recommend a later model slot loading imac. Good luck.

[Dale Sorel]

I set up a friend's mom with a 350 MHz G3 iMac with 256 megs of RAM and OS X Jaguar. She hasn't had a single problem with it :)

[Doctor Q]

I'll answer your card game question: Freeverse software (http://www.freeverse.com/). The have the standard card games, but with wacky graphics and silliness to give them the extra fun factor.

[winwintoo]

My Mom is 83. I just gave her my old 600mhz slot-loading iMac to play slots on. She loves it. Of course she doesn't know what else to do with it, but a coupld of months ago, she was petrified of computers.

btw I had tried to sell the iMac and was offered $600 for it - it's worth way more than that to me!!

m

[GbV76]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to go for it and turn my mom into a "switcher". This'll be a nice intro for her. Once G5s show up in the PBs she'll inherit my 17" iMac anyways :)