If You had to set up a G3 iMac Lab with ZERO $ for software...

[Paul F.]

I'm faced with yet another school with no money in their budget for software... (do some of these folks buy a car and not budget for gas?)..

Fortuately, the hardware is in pretty good shape. I installed most of it 5-6 years ago, and upgraded it a few years back.
iMac G3 "Snow", 600Mhz, all with a minimum of 384Mb RAM and I think 40Gb hard drives.

A lot of old "Classic" software that is going to be removed because no one can prove the school has a legit license for any of it.
They DO have a legit license for OS 10.3 (fortunately!).

So here's what I'm thinking so far;
NeoOffice for an office-suite/word processor
iTunes/iPhoto/TextEdit etc as Apple Pre-Installed
I BELIEVE that these iMac shipped with Bugdom or Otto-Matic (I'll verify this later).
GraphicConverter
Google Earth
Firefox
Safari
Netscape for it's web-editing features (though I doubt this feature will be used this year)


Can anyone think of any other freeware or not-too-limited shareware thta would be appropriate for a K-12 school computer lab with ZERO dollars?

[Jp!]

I would write SOMEONE for a grant/gift. Either people with money to give OR the software companies....even MS!

And, while you're at it, explain how old G3 iMacs are!

Have a bake sale, or other.

And look for abandonware.

[Paul F.]

Jp!

All those things are on the "to do" list..
But School is starting MONDAY, and I want to get the pirate-ware off the computers ASAP...

This is a private school, very used to finding "creative funding"... but they're also recovering from a couple bad years (Looooonnnggg story...).

For the next few months, I want to get the maximum bang for no-bucks that I can for 'em... while I assess what they really NEED vs the pie-in-the-sky dreams that got their lab dicked up in the first place.


Good idea about the abandon-ware...

[Jp!]

I don't have the time at the moment to comb through all of these...

http://www.cornstalker.com/freeware/x.html

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/20...eware.html

[BigGuynRusty]

Bugdom
Otto-Matic
Nanosaur

BGnR

[ztirffritz]

Use Nvu rather than Netscape for web creation tools.

http://www.nvu.com/index.php

Use Scribus for Page Layout
http://www.scribus.net/index.php?name=Downloads&req=viewdownload&cid=9

[onthedownlow]

Has this school ever been audited for software licensures?

[Harbourmaster]

Didn't 2001-2 vintage iMacs still come with a copy of Appleworks? Take a look at the disks that came with the Macs just to be sure...

[chas_m]

Do these Macs have their original install disks? If so, you might have AppleWorks 6 on there.

[ka jowct]

Check out TechSoup for donations to schools and non-profits, for future reference. You have to pay something, but 5 licenses for M$ Orifice was about $100 last time I checked.