For the first time in the history of me ordering stuff from Amazon they actually managed to ship a “Usually ships in 24 hours” item within 24 hours. The iBook is cute and positively dwarfed by my Inspiron 8600. My neighbor at the office says these things grow on you, so I should probably get it wrapped up and under my mother’s Christmas tree ASAP. But first I should probably install some software. Recommendations?
Digging around the Applications folder it seems that Apple has covered pretty much everything my mother might need: iApps, Safari, Appleworks, Quicken 2005.
A couple of things come to mind. Some form of backup software, and since this is for your mother ideally you would want something that is somewhat automatic. Of course, this brings up the issue of what to backup to. Personally I think the simplest thing is a Firewire external hard drive. I use Retrospect (http://www.dantz.com/) but I am sure there are other lower cost solutions out there.
Another thing you might consider is a .Mac account. I know this has a yearly fee, but personally think it is worth it.