I'm wondering if you might not be starting in the wrong place in your thinking about this problem. Have you considered upgrading your OS to Tiger as a starting point? You might possibly need to add memory to get it working at its best (minimum RAM is 256MB), so there's some money involved. But that would add a huge amount of functionality to your computer.

Then you would have several ways to go for your word processing needs.

MS Office really does work well on a Mac, particularly the version for OSX. Unfortunately it is expensive, and MicroSoft has been slow to bring the latest and best to the Mac version.

Apple has a modestly priced alternative in the form of iWork, which sells for $79. It includes both word processing (Pages) and presentation (Keynote) programs. I'm using Pages for most of my work now, even though I own Word. It's sort of a medium duty program that does fewer things than Word, but does the most common functions exceptionally well. The .doc format isn't native to it, but it imports and exports .doc and several other formats. An advantage is that for just $20 extra bucks you can buy a family license that lets you share with others. MicroSoft basically requires you to mortage your children to get extra licenses.

Once you have OSX you can also consider opensource software. I've been experimenting with Neooffice/J, and will probably just shift over to it rather than buy the new version of Office when it eventually comes out. It is generally equivalant in functionality to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, though it doesn't have as much in the way of supporting resources. For instance, the gallery is pretty slender. It also unfortunately does file management in the Windows style. But you can download it for free, and it produces documents that are compatible with Word, Excel, etc.

Finally, if you must stay with your present operating system, why not look on Ebay for an old version of Word for Mac? You should be able to buy it cheap.

Just to offer a dissenting voice on upgrading to OS X.

Keep in mind that the original poster has a PowerMac G3. This could range from a bunch of different models. The really old ones don't really work with OS X too well. Newer ones (such as the B/W G3 tower) will run better.

As far as the $69 Tiger edu deal. I'm almost 100% sure that it's a complete install, not an upgrade. Apple has pretty much stopped making uupgrade discs for the OS.

Instead of upgrading to OS X, I would suggest looking for Word 2001 for Mac. This was the last version of Word for OS 9. Microsoft put out a combo with Word 2001/Entourage for $80 or something. It was actually a great deal back in 2001 since it allowed me to upgrade to Office vX for a small fee. Anyways, if you can find it on eBay or something, it would be a good find. And when you do eventually upgrade to OS X, you may qualify for an Upgrade price on Office.

Also, keep in mind that Word 2004 (and Word vX as well) are dog slow in OS X. Word 2001 was 100x faster on my iBook under OS 9. You might not think that speed is that important on a word processor, but just wait until you try to type a paper and experience keyboard lag. So frustrating, even for a touch typist.

ft

I gave my old Beige G3 to my son. It could handle 10.1 okay, but I never went beyond that.

Now if you stay with OS 9, consider Nisus Writer Classic. Very powerful word processor (unparalleled GREP, macro, etc.). I used it regularly on the G3.