Apple gave away Lexmark printers in '01

When I got my Tibook three years ago, they gave me a new Lexmark printer with it. It is not OSX compatible so I sent it to a friend that has an upgraded old iMac G3 333 tray loader. Believe it or not, this gal (who was a teacher) had been using her trusty old SE all these years! I suggested the late 90's iMac to get her up to speed by going to OS 9.2 for a few months and then Panther.

The Lexmark z32 is going nuts on her. I recall that it was a bit tricky at times for me, but I worked around it. Basically because she is from the Stone Age computer wise, she's freaked that things seem so difficult because of a printer. She's across the country so she's had to hire a female Apple Tech out there who has been costing her a small fortune.

I reminded her that she's not paid ANYTHING for computers since 1990 but it still is bugging me that this stupid old Lexmark printer is driving her nuts. The iMac is giving her the error message "the computer is not connecting to the printer' or something like that. Does anyone remember anything about these Lexmark printers? And should I just have her update to Panther now (she's got an 80 gig 7200 Maxtor with 384mbs of ram) and make her get a new printer or should she slog it out with her old 9.2 setup. She's at 580 bucks now with Apple Tech charging lion's share of things -- should I make her cut and run to Panther or what do you think?

The Lexmark is OSX compatible? I had no idea as it said on the box only 8.6 - 9.2 compatible or something like that. That might make things smoother, and I did request a reinstall and an driver download on line, who knows what that tech did or did not really do.

No, the 580 is the total dollar amount -- 100 for the iMac (it was her daughter's), 40 for the Maxtor hd, I sent her some 128 mb ram free but the tech charged her 90 bucks for the 256 chip (after saying it was 40 -45 bucks to me) charged her 90 bucks to install 9.2 (!) and her total bill was over 400 bucks. I was pissed as my Apple Tech guy at UCLA here (great and smart guy who runs things there) did the same work on another pal's iMac for 90 bucks TOTAL (excluding the memory chip).

I even called Apple to see if they had this gal (an Apple tech gal, that's right) on record as I thought the pricing was outrageous.

Well, the problem is that my friend is totally ignorant of computers and, weirdly, so is her 18 year old son. Things I would do at no cost would somehow end up costing her a bundle, even with me walking her through things on the phone.

And thanks, evil santa, for the head's up on how it has become my "fault" that things are breaking down when you give stuff to friends. Its weird how that works, but my friend is pretty good about holding back her frustration from me.

I guess I'll suggest Panther, then. She needs to switch Apple techs, to start.
Again my only good news out of this is that she's getting 14 light years of computer knowledge in a few weeks. As she's a teacher and a writer, I think it is prudent she be online and Mac literate now.