Apple2 questions from a PC-weenie

[forbesm@atlantis.CS.ORST.EDU (Mark Forbes)]

This is kind of FAQ stuff, but not exactly.

I'm a PC person. Probably always will be. My neighbor (15) has a IIGS,
with 1Meg of memory, a color screen, a mouse, and a single external
floppy disk drive. They're not financially able to spend much on upgrades
or enhancements, but they'd like to use the IIGS for more than just a
typewriter. I'm trying to find out enough about the IIGS to determine
what is available in the public domain for them, that would make their
Apple useful for more than just typing.

They were unaware until I pointed it out that shareware and freeware even
exist. Likewise the Internet. I'm going to donate my old 1200 baud modem
to them, but I need to learn enough about the machine and information
sources to be able to get it hooked up and running.

I see references to a variety of operating systems. Are such things available
for free from Apple, or is this like buying a new version of MS-DOS for
my PC? How many different operating environments are currently used by
IIGS owners, and what's considered the de facto standard? If it was a PC,
my answer would be MS-DOS version 5, for example.

Assuming that I can acquire a 'current' operating system, is a hard drive
assumed present by most software now, as is the case with DOS machines?
If so, what's the minimum size necessary to be minimally useful? (Note that
these folks are *not* power users; a 'barely livable' system would 
probably be a great improvement in power for them...)  Does the addition
of a hard drive require a controller card as well, or is drive support
integrated in the machine?

Are there options which are now considered to be 'mandatory' by most users?
I know that a mouse is already present, but nothing else but 1Meg is
currently installed as an option.

I know a lot of these questions are fairly simple, but there's little
documentation and I'm strictly a PC person. I'm also an electronics
design engineer, but that doesn't help much in this case.

Thanks for your help!
Mark G. Forbes | forbesm@atlantis.cs.orst.edu
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be blamed on the engineer."