Never had a Mac before, so I don't know what to do...

Yesterday, I purchased an iBook G4 (Version 10.3.9, 1.2 GHz PowerPC G4, 512 MB DDR SDRAM), and I am confused. I bought it for school, so I need to know what the best Microsoft Word equivalent is (free would be nice), and what all else I would need to load on it? Also, it shows the facebook log in page, but once I log in, it just shows me blank pages. And do I need to put all my itunes songs from my old laptop on disks to move to this one, or is there an easier way to get my songs on it? Help?!

With 10.3.9 (Which is old Panther OSX) you are going to have issues galore with many modern Web Pages. I would say try Firefox but a Firefox that will run on that old OSX will be probably about as bad as Safari.

Since you have 512 megs RAM, I would suggest getting a used copy of 10.4 Tiger OSX at least. If you can also max out the RAM (Memory).

I will let others handle the other questions.

Also is that a 12" iBook? If so here are the specs. Max Ram is 1.25GB. You can get a 1GB PC2700 DDR stick which will give you 1.25GB. With that you can Run 10.5 Leopard OSX even but that will be hard to find at a low price. 10.3 is dead. No support, no even semi modern apps that run on it.

dtravis7 said:

Also is that a 12" iBook? If so here are the specs. Max Ram is 1.25GB. You can get a 1GB PC2700 DDR stick which will give you 1.25GB. With that you can Run 10.5 Leopard OSX even but that will be hard to find at a low price. 10.3 is dead. No support, no even semi modern apps that run on it.

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Yes,I believe it is 12''. It doesn't have to be super cheap as long as it works. I just need a good computer, I have always wanted a Mac so I got this one even though it is old because I could actually afford it.

Yesterday, I purchased an iBook G4 (Version 10.3.9, 1.2 GHz PowerPC G4, 512 MB DDR SDRAM), and I am confused. I bought it for school, so I need to know what the best Microsoft Word equivalent is (free would be nice), and what all else I would need to load on it?

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Go to this web site: LINK You'll find old versions of both Open Office and AbiWord for the Mac. I recommend Open Office over AbiWord. Make sure you download the right version. You need the version for OS X 10.3. Open Office is a suite of apps and includes a word processor that's Word compatible.

Brynn said:

Yesterday, I purchased an iBook G4 (Version 10.3.9, 1.2 GHz PowerPC G4, 512 MB DDR SDRAM), and I am confused. I bought it for school, so I need to know what the best Microsoft Word equivalent is (free would be nice), and what all else I would need to load on it? Also, it shows the facebook log in page, but once I log in, it just shows me blank pages. And do I need to put all my itunes songs from my old laptop on disks to move to this one, or is there an easier way to get my songs on it? Help?!

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Can I be blunt here for a minute?

This isn't going to work out for school. You're talking about a computer that is MINIMUM six years old, probably a good deal older. EVERYTHING from the web to the software has changed dramatically since then. You won't be able to run the current ... well, much of ANYTHING. As you've discovered, even Facebook isn't going to work. Take that as a sign.

As my colleagues above said, it's possible to get a word processor going. That's going to be pretty much it, along with email. Everything else is going to be a frustrating game of trying to make things work on an old computer.

My advice would be to spent your efforts on school, and find a way to get a new(er) Mac. Anything from 2009 on up should be quite suitable.