The plus is a great choise for word processing (if you can get your hands on one easily). I would agree with tomlee59 that a zip drive is a good replacement for a hardrive. They're much easier to get, more silent, more reliable (if the zip disk breaks you just get another one), occupy much less space and you can connect it to any other mac with a SCSI port.
The plus is virtually noiseless (as it has no fan), although this tends to shorten its life. I have 3 pluses, and the oldest one of them (a 512k upgraded) has been in use for about 4 years and it is still working.
I have to agree that the Se/30 is the best compact mac in terms of performance. I have two of them, but suprisingly I use them less than the plus simply because they're noisy by comparison. Of course, if you want to do anything else than word processing and / or running old programs then the SE/30 is the best choise no doubt. If you can't get your hands on one you might h ave a look at the classic II. It has the same processor as the Se/30 (although no expansion and a 16 bit bus, makign it a bit slower) and s far as I know a more robust analog board.
In all cases for speed I would run system 6.0.8, unless you really, really need system 7. System 7 should run on a 68030 mac with suficient ram quickly enough though (although nothing beats the magic of system 6.0.8 booting on my 128mb se/30 [of course i can't address all that memory though in system 6] )
The plus is virtually noiseless (as it has no fan), although this tends to shorten its life. I have 3 pluses, and the oldest one of them (a 512k upgraded) has been in use for about 4 years and it is still working.
I have to agree that the Se/30 is the best compact mac in terms of performance. I have two of them, but suprisingly I use them less than the plus simply because they're noisy by comparison. Of course, if you want to do anything else than word processing and / or running old programs then the SE/30 is the best choise no doubt. If you can't get your hands on one you might h ave a look at the classic II. It has the same processor as the Se/30 (although no expansion and a 16 bit bus, makign it a bit slower) and s far as I know a more robust analog board.
In all cases for speed I would run system 6.0.8, unless you really, really need system 7. System 7 should run on a 68030 mac with suficient ram quickly enough though (although nothing beats the magic of system 6.0.8 booting on my 128mb se/30 [of course i can't address all that memory though in system 6] )