My first suggestion would be that, unless she has a specific reason for upgrading to OS X, she should stay with 9.1. Like all Version 1.0 items, OS X is going to need a few things worked out and will likely be adopted immediately by: a) developers, b) hard core geeks that just have to have the latest and greatest thing released, c) people that don't know any better and give in to some form or another of pressure to upgrade. She'd be better off waiting for it to mature a little bit, especially if she is just a casual user. As for the serial ports, since the Beige G3 is a supported machine, I would thing that it's serial ports would be supported as well. The only G3 or newer system not supported by OS X is the original G3 Powerbook. Jeff