1. Can anyone suggest a good book to
read up on various problem solutions
and good practices for the mac?
2. What is a good way to archive a home
use computer? How should one back up
files? How frequently should i burn CDs,
and how to create a system for burning
CDs?
3. To update to OSx, it is necessary that I
have to update through all the versions of
9.X right? Forgive me if i had asked this
before, I am still not clear on this. IS OS X
tied in to a the new macs, or can I use my
old 400mghz? Thanks a bunch!

First off, upgrade to 9.2.2. It's a lot more stable than 9.0.x.

Book...anything by Ted Landau is pretty good, likewise with Bob Levitus.

Archival/backup system: get something like Retrospect Express from Dantz and then try a few schedules out based on how much you use the Mac - I'd say once a week is probably plenty for most home users.

OS X: Yeah, you need to upgrade to 9.2.2 if you want to use Classic at all, but if you don't care about Classic, you won't need to upgrade. However, you should upgrade anyway, and it's free. As long as you've got a Mac that shipped from Apple with that 400 MHz CPU you're fine; if it's an upgrade you might have issues.

p

An excellent book but for Mac OSX is: "Mac OSX
Second Edition by David Pogue".

Like the Pickle said first upgrade to 9.2.2

In General, the System Requirements for Mac OSX
are:
 Power Mac G3 or G4, iMac, eMac, PowerBook G3 or
G4, or iBook computer with 128MB of physical RAM.

Thank you!