Sometimes, you never really know what you'll find in a thrift store.

Adam Guha recently picked up a 25$ iMac from a thrift shop, amid bulky CPU towers and 10-year old PCs. Not knowing even the kind of Mac he picked up, he booted it up and found a six-year old iMac DV Special Edition in pretty sweet shape. After a bit of tinkering with the OS and adding a mouse and keyboard, he realized it would be the perfect upgrade to his grandparents' Performa 630, a Apple creation from the early 1990s.

The iMac itself was a big step up from the Performa. Unlike the Performa, the Mac had USB ports to use with digital cameras and printers. It was also DVD-capable, which is definitely a bonus. Since it also only needed two cords, a power cord and a cable cord, this replacement was also going to be a lot friendlier to grandma and grandpa than their previous comp. Of course, it needed a bit more functionality, so he added the latest versions of Safari and Firefox as well.

With far more features than their old computer, all Adam needed to sell the idea of the new Mac to his grandparents was to add their favorite game or two. Of course, if they weren't going to get on the internet to email their grandkids, it was still going to be a great computer for a solid game of solitaire.

With the coming of newer and more complex gadgets these days, we tend to forget how overwhelming it can be for people who are new to it. Buying some old, but not obsolete, computers and sprucing them up can sometimes help to close that gap between newcomers and average users.

Who knows? You may just end up getting the family together to mod a computer for grandma.