Best Version of OSX for CRT iMacs?

[jonkanner]

I am responsible for the computer lab at a small Bible college in Fiji. Our current computer lab is a mix of Macs (+ one HP that probably won't last long in tropical condidtions). Our oldest units are a few all-in-one Peforma '040LC's and the newest is a G3 in a beige box to match the 7600's of which we have five. We have a few other models as well and keeping them all set up and running is a chore, especially since the G3 needs OS8.5 or higher and the 040's need 8.0 or lower.

We have just received donations of a few CRT iMacs of several vintages, and have the opportunity to buy more from a Mac dealer that is "reconditioning" them for resale (they were trade-ins from an Apple program, probably run for schools). They will sell by the piece or by the pallet load and pallet loads are very cheap, so we want to update.

I am new to OSX (love my new iBook G4 14") and have been away from UNIX for 20+ years, so I have some questions.

First, what is the "best" version of OSX to run on an assortment of CRT iMacs? To us, "best" means mainly one thing - stable, stable , stable. Cheap is also important. We can't pony up for 25 copies of Tiger and even that many copies of Panther will stretch the budget. We do want all machines to run the exact same OS and app's configured exactly the same way. Special features will mostly be unused. These machines will be used for word processing, printing word processing files, occasional viewing of libraries stored as PDF's, and little else.

Second question, what is the best cheap word processor? We currently run MS Word 5.1a (quite stable, no macro virus problems as with 6.0 and up, cheap or free since it is basically a garage sale item). What recommendations do I hear for a stable, cheap and easy to use WP for our prospective new iMacs? Is Word Perfect any good? Any other hot tips? We need to be able to produce documents of up to 50 pages (10 or less is most common) with footnotes (not end notes). Ability to open and edit recent MS Word files is a big plus, as is the ability to export/save in a format that MS Word can open.

Third, we will have all our 16 machines on a network, and we want to have all student files accesible from every machine. Currently, we keep them all on a second hard drive burried inside one of our 7600's, but the problem is that only 12-13 other machines can connect to that drive at one time, and we have several hokey work-arounds. If we go to OSX do we eliminate such limitations? How many user accounts can we reasonably have on these OSX iMacs? Can we have one for each of our 150 students and staff? If so, do we need to create a separate account for each person on each machine? or is there an easy way to create one account for each person and have that same account accesible from every machine on the network?

Finally, what are the best printers to share? Our current lab uses Stylewriter 1200's and the cheap ink (and moderatly cheap replacement cartridges when reloading don't work no more) is a real plus. Lack of decent paper in and out trays are a pain at times. We monkeyed with a Laserwriter 300 select for a while but it cannot use standard paper, and American paper is not available here, so we gave up on it despite high speed, excellent print, and very cheap consumables. We need printing in basic black - color is not wanted, nor is camera-ready quality needed. Reliability, ease of use, and economy are the watchwords.

Any helps and hints will be much appreciated!

JK

[Mikef]

There is a 'barrier' for older Macs, I believe that 10.2.x is the last recommended OS-X version that will run on macs without a built-in USB port. Really early Macs won't run OS-X without a third party software cludge so I'd recommend you aim at 10.2.summat which should be fairly cheap on ebay.

Word processor, have a look at Open Office, now available for OS-X, I've just loaded it and they say it's MS-Word compatible. I haven't really thrashed it yet so can't say how it gets on with large documents but as it' free it must be worth considering.

Server access limitation - yeah this is summat that Apple does to encourage large organisations to purchase the Server version of their software ( Apple have to earn dosh like the rest of us ). I haven't pushed ours to this limit as I've let the file server running OS-9 whilst all the users have OS-X ( our bag of money ran out). However as Apple sell a server version of OS-X I bet the limit still applies.

Printers -humm touchy subject. These days printers ae sold as loss leaders with the profit made on the ink. We've stuck with old Apple Laser Select 360s BUT with the new Macs you don't have a serial port so you have to get serial the ethernet adapters. I'd check what ports the Macs have and get the oldest B/W inkjet I could. Personally I have retained an old Epson on which I do most of my day-to-day printing as I can refill the cartridges three or four times before they become U/S. Final fancy output is done on a new printer.

Hope this helps
Mike

[chipz]

As fare as the version that is best suited for your situation, 10.2.x "Jaguar" will probably do the job.

As far as WP's are concerned, dowload a copy of NeoOffice/J. It's free and is MS Word compatible. It is a little slow opening, but does the job well and best of all...it's FREE!

I'm afraid I can't help you regarding your networking situation, but I'm sure others will reply who can.

When it comes to printers, that is a tricky area. I think you would want to consider a laser printer, unless you have a compelling reason to use an ink jet printer. Seeing you are in Fiji, I think a good laser is a good choice. Brother has some good networking ones out that you might consider. HP also has afew low priced models that might work f0or you as well. In the used markey, I woulod be careful of any purchase because of what may lie down the road. Replacing things like drums, etc. cand be pretty expensive these days. In fact, I have seen some cases where buying an entire machine can be cheaper than buying just the toner cartridge.

[bigted32]

IF it is a latter G3 imac Panther will work quite nicely as long as you have at least 384megs of ram, what I did was install it on an external firewire harddrive to test it out and it worked really well, OSX panther will need at least 10gigs of harddisk space to work really well all though once you start downloading updates this size may grow.

I hope that this was of help to you.

[mrcqm]

BTW, Sun started StarOffice as a free office suite to compete against MS Office. It is a very well made suite. Originally they planned to make their profits only from selling servers to run a back-office piece (essentially the desktops would then run thin clients). They changed their minds on this strategy and started selling it for ~$80 (last time I checked) BUT they released OpenOffice to the open source community to play with.

Re: compatibility with MS Office files, the only problems I've come across are macros. Macros, generally speaking, won't be compatible. Standard Word docs, however, should be no problem.

NeoOffice is an offshoot of OpenOffice but seems to be more refined specifically for the Mac.

As I'm new to the Mac environment, I am trying out both NeoOffice and iWork (not free / available from Apple store). So far I really like iWork a lot but it takes some gettin used to.

Still love my mini.

[Mongoose961]

On the word processor front there are 2 names that were not mentioned. Pages (part of iWork) and Appleworks . Both are $79 and offer a bevy of options and at 1/3 to 1/2 the price of it's competitors. I used Appleworks for quite sometime until I got MS Office as a gift. I know that these are not free but they are very user friendly and powerful office suites.

'goose