New to Macs with a question.

[GreycatSR5]

Hello all, just got my first mac, an Indigo iBook, and need a little assistance if someone can point me in the right direction. My iBook came to me with OS 9.1 installed, and I'm trying to muddle my way through it. When I looked at the various guides for switching and changing over to mac from windoze, I find that they're all geared to switchers using some form of OS X. Are there any guides out there for users of the 'classic' OS? Or is the new OS X similar enough to OS 9 for the guides to still be helpful?

Alas, for now, purchasing a copy of OS X is not an option, so I'm stuck with what came on the iBook, and no install disks for it either.

Thanks for the help, the last time I used an Apple product, the latest and greatest thing was the Apple IIe

G

 

[velocityg4]

The only book I can think of off hand that may be useful is Mac OS 9 for dummies.

But the transition would really depend on what you did with Windows. As there are very few current products that use OS 9 any more.

The most advanced web browser would be iCab.
I think MS Office 2001 is the most recent version maybe v.X.
You could also run Appleworks 6 I think.
As for photo editing I think either Photoshop 6 or 7 was the last classic version.
As for networking with Windows you would need a Samba Client the only one I could find was an older version of Dave I think 3.1 is the latest for OS 9. All I could find was v1.0 though which does not mention Samba.
You will most likely need Stuffit Expander 7 for compressed files.

My old Mac is much older and I only really use it for old 68K games. Though I have considered running Photoshop 3.0.4 and Word 5.0.

Anyways here are some resources you may find helpful. Though they are inteded for System 7/6 users they can help with OS 9 though many of the programs will have more recent versions for Mac OS 9.
Old Apple Downloads
More old downloads
System 7 Today
Apple Updates Much of what is here can be useful especially Disk Copy
Version Tracker The largest legal download location for OS 9 I know of.


Anyways you need to provide us with more information of what you want to do with your Mac before adequate advice can be given.

Edit: If you are planning on using that iBook as an active daily internet machine I would highly recommend Mac OS 10.2 since that can be had for really cheap. If you will not be doing heavy browsing and will mainly be playing old games, typing and such then Mac OS 9 can work well. I also forgot to mention if you want MP3 playback you could use iTunes 2.0.4.

 

[GreycatSR5]

Anyways you need to provide us with more information of what you want to do with your Mac before adequate advice can be given.

Wow, thanks for such an informative response. I'll probably be able to spend days looking through some of those links.

As to the what I want to do with the mac, I want to learn the mac system, and familiarize myself with it. I don't have a lot of play money, so the best I was able to do was the Indigo iBook. I maybe able to get an early version of OS X at some point for this machine, but it will take some saving, as there's no such thing as disposable income at the moment.

After I familiarize myself with the system, I want to use it mainly for typing, blogging, and surfing the internet. One of the main attractions for this model was the Airport card. I mean, I got a laptop with a working battery, OS, modem, WiFi, Firewire, etc., all for under a hundred bucks. I'd done some research and heard that even though it wouldn't be lightning fast or anything, the clamshells maintained their functionality for things like browsing, reading, and typing.

It's only got 320 Megs of RAM, and a 10 Gig HD, so I don't think I can do a whole lot of high end stuff, but at the moment, I really just want to familiarize myself with how the mac environment differs from what I've been using for so long, and become comfortable working in it. Once I reach a certain level of competence with it, I may try branching out and working with some different programs to push my level of comfort a little farther out, but for now, I'm really just trying to learn the basics.

Thanks again for the informative response, looks like i have some reading ahead of me

G