First time buyer, Should I buy this ibook G3? advice please.

I want to get a mac in the mean time because it looks pretty neat. :headphone
My fujitsu laptop just died on me and im still using a desktop of course (pc p4 2.5 1.5GB ram) I want a laptop just for doing papers for school. Web surfing is number 1 with typing papers and sending email. I might be using it to browse newsgroups and occasional downloads. I just want it stable and jump from on program to the next without a problem. Im tired of spyware and viruses that I even have to carry around.

For $350 Shipped here is what i get:

iBOOK G3 550MHZ (said used, but in perfect condition, no original box)
40GB HD
128MB Ram
CD Burner
OS X 10.2.8
Airport Card
AC adapter

Software: OS, Microsoft office, other

Is this worth it? I mean how fast is the 550MHZ will it be able to handel stuff like web browsing, email, word editing, watching movies, music, newsgroups..and the basic stuff. I just dont want it to hand on me when switching apps and etc... what does the 550MHZ processor on this unit compare to on a PC(in other words which processor and about how much)?
how is the size on the notebook is it ok to carry around? not that im gonna take it anywhere from home.
Should I close the deal?

thanks

That's a great deal, man. That's one of the bigger hard drives for that model, and the fact that it has Airport and Office already are both huge pluses, since having to purchase those would majorly suck up the 'good price' factor. If you upgrade the RAM, you'll even be able to run Tiger fairly well if you wanted to OS upgrade. Even if not, I'd definitely max out the RAM, as it isn't that expensive to do. Even if you don't, though, you'll survive. Just don't do too much at once. The machine will definitely handle what you want it to. Oh, and it's definitely small enough to carry around with ease.

Apple never made a 550MHz iBook.

Yeah, but in all probability it's just a 500 even.

Thanks for the reply.
what type of RAM does it use? I want to get about 256MB or more (dont wanna spend more than $30) and I need an additional battery.

RAM:
http://dealram.com/prices/systems/6/256MB.html

By the way, this deal seems screwed up to me. I would be really wary of this deal because if it is indeed the 500 Mhz G3 iBook, that system was sold with a max hard drive capacity of 20GB. It's totally possible that the owner had a 40GB installed later, but what are the odds that they both made a typo in the processor speed AND happened to get a hard drive upgrade? Sounds like this person doesn't know what they're selling. I'd be wary. Even if they are selling a 500Mhz G3 iBook, that machine was marketed from May to October 2001, so this system might be as old as 4.5 years. Yikes! Even Macs aren't invincible; $350 is not a deal if the thing breaks in six months.

Also, you mentioned that you want to play movies on this thing. If it's being advertised with a CD-RW drive rather than a Combo Drive (CD-RW/DVD-ROM), then it's possible that this machine can't play DVD's. Double yikes!

Thirdly, since you're new to the Mac world, it's worth noting that the #1 way to speed up your Mac is to dump a lot of RAM into it. I've seen a 500Mhz G3 iBook with 256 MB of RAM in it, and it's nothing exciting. If you're coming from a 2.5Ghz desktop, you are going to be totally underwhelmed. Think of it this way: the big news when this model came out was that the 500Mhz G3 system could, in certain situations, run twice as fast as a Pentium 500Mhz system, the key word being "in certain situations" (Steve Jobs took some flak for advertising the chip that way.) But anyway, from our 2005 perspective, that's not too impressive even if Jobs had been totally accurate about the double-the-speed thing. No system from 2001 is going to live up to your 2005 desktop, so it just depends on how much speed you really need. And if you really need speed, you should think seriously about putting a 512MB chip in there. That'll run you about $80.