G3 iMac on 10.3.8 spinning beachball -- wld Tiger help or not?

[California]

My mom and stepdad have this G3 iMac; 500mhz/768mb ram/20gb hd -- and they get so much email through their TimeWarner "roadrunner" account through their OS X Panther mail function that I just can't believe it. Something like 75 emails a day -- and my mom likes keeping the photos she gets from friends so she has a too much saved on there.

Anyway, they keep getting the spinning beachball on their email. I keep going over there and deleting all the spam from their account AND from their "deleted" mail in the mail trashcan but it still is running slow. Have had to have them force quit a few times to get rid of the beachball.

Outside of the requisite memory max to 1 gig and new hd they are going to get soon, any suggestions about them on Panther? I'm afraid to upgrade them to 10.3.9 and also Tiger on this three year old machine -- though I am also thinking about getting them a dvdrw/cdrw unit to replace the cd rom oem drive.

Would they gain anything by going to TIger? Honestly, I am still amazed that these oldsters can get on the computer AT ALL, so the spinning beachball really ruins their day. I've repaired permissions and emptied cache. Don't want to confuse them by making them get a new set up altogether. Any suggestions outside of hardware upgrades?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Tiger may help, more RAM may help, the new Mail.app may help...

But people also have to realise that upgrading to a new machine after 4-6 years makes sense as well as taking responsibility for keeping that machine running smoothly.

If they can't even empty their mail trash then some classes or some tuition is in order. The goal should be to empower them to handle low-level stuff like that. Are there also some junk mail rules that you can set up to trash their spam?

I have a friend who bought a second-hand tangerine G3iMac for journalism freelancing. Not only did she get ripped off when she bought it, it's no longer suitable for her needs but she never thought or planned ahead about getting a new machine so after her harddrive stopped working and I replaced it, it's come as a big surprise to her that she will need a new Mac within the next 12 months if she wants to use Office 2004.

 

[Bear]

Mailbox->Rebuild

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Anyway, they keep getting the spinning beachball on their email. I keep going over there and deleting all the spam from their account AND from their "deleted" mail in the mail trashcan but it still is running slow. Have had to have them force quit a few times to get rid of the beachball.
...
Any suggestions outside of hardware upgrades?

Yes, in main for each mailbox you have cleaned up, from the menu in Mail select Mailbox->Rebuild this will cause it to rebuild the datastructures for the selected mailbox. This has sped things up noticably when someone has deleted a fair bit of mail (since the last rebuild).