Bette: I'm a die-hard Macintosh user, although I do have to use a Wintel machine at work. The genealogy world is clearly biased against us and in favor of increasing Bill Gate's wealth. However, there really isn't any reason why your boss' mother (or anyone else, for that matter) shouldn't get a Mac. You are right in noting that software is an issue, but I don't think it's all that much of a problem once one has a program. I'm a poor graduate student, so I use Heritage 3.1.1 shareware, which isn't very elegant but works for me. Cyndi's List gives the following as Mac genealogy software: Family History Composer for the Macintosh Family Tree Maker GEDitCOM Genealogy Software Home Page Gene Macintosh Genealogy Software Heredis (French genealogy software) Heritage Genealogy Software Reunion Home Page Soundex Code Generator - Macintosh Sparrowhawk (A GEDCOM-to-HTML conversion program for the Macintosh.) Your Roots are Showing Reunion (see http://www.leisterpro.com/) seems to get really good press from the Mac publications; I downloaded the demo and it has a nice feel. Broderbund has a Mac version of FamilyTree Maker (see http://www.familytreemaker.com/macinfo.html), though I've read they usually upgrade it 6 months-1 year after the Windows version. Having said all that, I haven't run into any major issues in researching my family with a Mac, including file sharing. In fact, I've done exactly what your boss has done and recommended an i-Mac to my 80-year-old mother. The Mac is easier to set up and use than a Windows-based machine (last year there was a competition in which a 10-year set up a Mac quicker than a team of 4 or 5 adults set up a Wintel machine). Even though Windows has gradually grown more Mac-like, I still find the MacOS more intuitive. Moreover, I taught high school English for a number of years and found that the Mac was much friendlier to new computer-users than Wintel machines. MacOS also has one of the best search programs I've seen, called Sherlock. With it, you can not only find files on your hard drive, you can do a search using all the search engines (such as yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, etc.) at the same time. This makes finding things on the 'net much easier. In summary, I think you're boss' mother will do just fine with a Mac. Andrew