upgrading from OS X 10.0?

wow...

10.1? Good god, how do you survive?

Panther was a great OS, if you can save money (you WILL HAVE to buy iLife '06 separately) I say go for it.

 

10.0 , not 10.1 - 10.0 was what... puma? 10.1 was cheetah.

Ouch, heck I'd be upgrading to at least Panther. But yeah you could buy the CD's somewhere (tiger is DVD only, but they did have a special option where you could get CD's... actually it expires in august).

10.0, that is old, heck you're missing out for TONS of stuff.

 

10.4 ships on a DVD. You can contact Apple and ask them to send you a CD version of 10.4, but you might have to pay an additional shipping charge for that.

I've heard of some people with troubles updating by such a large leap. I've read about at least two people having trouble updating to 10.4 from 10.2. I'm not certain you can upgrade to 10.4 from 10.0, but you can always try. Otherwise, you'll need to do an archive and install or an erase an install.

Nope. You'll have to buy iLife. Only iTunes can be downloaded free of charge.

10.3 is a great OS. Very stable and functions with nearly every modern app. This is definitely an option, and something I would probably do myself if I were in your position. As a matter of convenience, all retail Panther disks shipped on a CD, so you won't have to worry about the correct format.

Regardless of what you decide, don't forget the updates. The latest OS updates are 10.4.7 and 10.3.9. Good luck.

 

Other way round...

10.0 = Cheetah
10.1 = Puma

But still on 10.0!
But, yeah... it is way too old for it really to be usefull. 10.3.x is minimal really.

I'm afraid Apple doesn't offer upgrades from 10.0 to 10.4. Also, AFAIK if you want to buy 10.3 for, say half-price, I would suggest eBay, or maybe someone over here @ MacRumors can help you...
Remeber to install at least 512 MB RAM

 

Something tells me the OP's mother hasn't ever used the OSX bootup that came on that iMac and is quite happy in OS9. Go with the cheap Panther install and use the rest to buy iLife. If you're lucky you may be able to get iLife 05 cheap too, but to get the most out of it you'll need a CD or DVD burner.

Remember also that all her OS9 software (MS Word etc.) will only run in Classic mode under OSX, so you may find she prefers to still work in OS9. The Classic mode in Panther and Tiger is way more compatible than the one in 10.0.

Lastly, RAM. My guess is that iMac only has 128MB installed. Bring it up to at least 512MB or it's going to crawl.

 

Wow. She is going to be so pleased with Panther. There's so much OSX software that won't even run on less than 10.2. Even Microsoft Office is 10.1 minimum, and the difference in the speed of everything is just colossal.

One last point. If she's using a USB DSL modem rather than a router for her Internet, make sure you take the modem drivers for Panther with you. Nothing worse than breaking the Internet connection and having to hunt round for a valid dial-up account. If she's on dial-up anyway, take the 10.3.9 Combo Updater and the latest iLife and Quicktime updates with you on a CD. Major bug fixes in that lot.