I set up Jann's iMac and that realized in about 20 minutes it was working - 100% wireless, no less - and there wasn't a THING I had to do after the system updates.
Wait! The printer! I didn't install that. I just plugged it in. Let's try printing. Oh. It works. "Do you want to see the ink level in your Canon S330 printer?" Wise guy.
The features of Tiger like Spotlight will prove to very useful. Dashboard can turn into a Ho-hum and it might forget it's there. There's a program called Amnesty that let's the Dashboard widgets run on the desktop which make it more useful.
I've been supporting computers and networks for pay for over 20 years. What I've found is there's so much on a Mac you can't expect to just jump in and noodle around and become a master in minutes. The mac is much easier and less aggrvating than windows to get cooking, but in my case I've had to make use of my Unix skills to get it done underneath a couple of times. I think mere civilians should be OK. The complications come when you're trying to get your Mac to get along with your exiting Windows boxes. Windows will continue to plaque you becuase of the the way was designed for lock in over standards for interoperability.
It does help to have some pointers and instruction to get more out of it. I sat through a "Switch at 6" at the local Apple store and learned a few things. We found a great book, Jim Heid's
The Macintosh iLife05 which comes with over 2 hours of instruction on an included DVD.
I've also gotten a lot out of the Take Control books
Take Control Books particularly "Take Control of Customizing Tiger"
You should know a couple of things about the iMac: 1) There have been many reports about iMac G5s having failed capacitors that make the power supply quietly burn up.
http://macintouch.com/imacg5part10.html#jun09
Alhought it usually onl makes sense for laptops, you may want to get the AppleCare 3 year extended warranty. But DON'T buy it along with the Mac. You have the entire first year under the the original warranty to get it covered, and AppleCare often shows up on sale at the Apple store refurb area and at
http://www.smalldog.com
2) Apple will be switching to Intel processors in 2 years. The wisdom is this means that your PowerPC powered Mac will be obsolete in 6-7 years - like it would have been anyway. In the meantime new software will be released for both PPC and Intel processors.
The concensus is if you need a new computer buy a Mac now.
I just bought a Mac mini. I would have gotten myself an iMac in light of all of the above, but the mini met the current mission requirements the best. I had just built a killer AMD 64 Windows system, which will be my last.
I'm planning on moving all of my personal day-to-day stuff to OS X Tiger on the Mac mini. The Windows machine will be a file server and where I work when forced to use Windows.
Buying a refurbed iMac from the Apple store is not a bad deal if you can't qualify for the educational store. The refurbs are actually better because they get burned in for a week. The new ones off the line don't get tested as well. Click on the Red Sale tag at
http://store.apple.com. Check the page often. iMacs and Applecare for iMacs show up fairly often.
Amazon has a $150 rebate on all Macs until June 28th Here's the
20" Imac G5 with Double Layer DVD Superdrive
Enjoy!