I need help with new Mac for my parents...

[6502]

9. But I really worry....

... about how to deal with things like "where is the..."?

Screen sharing is important for that.

Even that they used GNOME, I still have to help them with the use of the taskbar.
They are comfortable with a pull-down menu for launching applications... but have never gotten used to the list of running application pull down list.

And because I am not a Mac user, unless I have at least a running edition in a virtual machine, I won't know that clicking a certain thing will do a certain thing. Or even that it is there much of the time.

If I cannot get a legal copy of Mac OS X, then I might have to just bite the bullet to purchase a Mac Mini and set it up here.

I have to make it so that it is easy for them.

$50 for an OS DVD and running it a VM would have been perfect for that.

Maybe an older version of Mac OS X on DVD would suffice... I'm not sure.