[dustinw]

Specs: emac 800 mhz, 512 sdram pc133(i believe)

My mother in law has the above computer. I was wondering if an upgrade from panther to tiger would speed things up? She also has iphoto 2 or 3, would iphoto 6 be a nice speed bump..or is her machine just to slow to handle the 06 software.

One last question. Can the emac be used as a second monitor? Depending on the answers above she may upgrde to the intelmac 20". Ive told her it would blow away her current machine, but she asked that I find out the above questions. I appreciate any help you can bestow upon this Apple nOOb..

dustin

[typoon]

You can upgrade it. I would get another 512 Megs of RAM for it while you were at it. Tiger would and OS X in general would be a more enjoyable. Her Machine would be able to handle the new iLife Suite. It obviously wouldn't be as fast as the new Intel iMacs but it is fine. I'm running Tiger and iLife 06 on a Dual 800 and it runs great. Tiger would also makes things run a bit faster too. Or at least make it seem like it.

The eMac I don't think can be used as or with a second monitor. Neither can the new iMacs.

I would say that it depends on what she is doing and how much HD space she has. If she is just using it for iPhoto and for browsing I would say that the eMac is fine. If she wants to do video and other things I would get the new Intel iMacs or even a refurbed iMac G5.

[OreoCookie]

The eMac cannot be used as a second monitor. However you might be able to use a second monitor with the eMac. For iMacs and iBooks, there is ScreenSpanning Doctor, but I'm not sure whether it works with eMacs as well. Just google for it and give it a shot. I used it with all iBooks I have owned and it worked great!

Also, OS X likes RAM, so upgrading to 1 GB will probably improve performance.

Upgrading the OS does not speed up things by orders of magnitude, i. e. noticeably.

iPhoto 2 (I don't think there ever was a version 3) was slow as a dog, so upgrading iLife will be an improvement.

To be honest, if I were in your place, I would worry about the monitor. I worked with some eMacs and once you are used to lcd screens, you never want to go back