Installing software on Mac

[marlene]

Yeah, it's me asking! I have a friend who uses an old Mac (OS 9, don't know the specific version) who's having trouble installing downloaded software, and of course I'm no help at all. She's not big on visiting forums (for one thing, she has a dial-up connection) despite my urging, so I thought I'd throw this out there.

She says that when she downloads software (one example she gave me is RealPlayer), she "can't get it to work." I asked for more details and she said:

When I load internet software, I can't find it afterwards. Drives me crazy, but really, I can't find it. I put the loads in Applications, then it's byebye, too bad.

She apparently doesn't have a problem when installing from a disk, just installing from a downloaded file.

Any thoughts/advice?

Separate -- but possibly related -- question. She lost the disk with her scanner software, so she refuses to upgrade to OSX because she will lose the use of her scanner. Is it correct that when upgrading the OS, she will lose all of her installed software? (I'm pretty sure she only has one hard drive.)

And is it possible for her to copy her installed software (e.g., onto an external hard drive, which she'd have to buy) and then copy it back on to the internal hard drive after upgrading the OS? I thought that on Macs you didn't really have to "install" software per se -- I was once told that you just have to copy it onto the hard drive and it works (unlike Windows which requires an installation procedure that puts entries in the registry, etc.).

Am I wrong about that? Or is it the way Macs used to work in the old days, but not now?

FWIW, she has a Umax scanner, so I believe she would have to pay for a new software disk, and she doesn't want to do that.

mxh