Just switched - now what should I do?

Mac OS X Missing Manual: Panther Edition by David Pogue. Really helpful when switching from the Windows world.

Enjoy.

scarlets knees said:

Anyway any suggestions on what to get to help me experinece the best of my PB and OSX? Any good OSX guides or is it really that easy?

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It is that easy - if you were a Windows poweruser, you'll find some stuff different but in general, it's an easy learning cover.

Follow some of the advice in this very recent thread and ask if you need anything in particular.

...will need a word processor i can import old Word documents into as i ain't retyping them all, do I need to get Office for Mac or will iwork do it or is there open source stuff?

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Probably depends how complicated your Word docs are. If it's just text, then iWork should be able to open them - or even text edit. If you have lots of formatting, then you might be better served with Office (particularly if you also need spreadsheet capability). There is open source stuff but IIRC, it has to run within X11 so you may not feel comfortable with it to start with.

Also would love to know more about airport extreme and if i can run a mac and a PC (not mine) down the same connection and if so how? Best broadband supplier in the UK?

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Yes, you can. The best way of doing it will depend on what connectivity your PC has. Does it have ethernet or a wireless card? If your PC has a broadband connection and a wifi card, you may be able to share your connection directly with no extra stuff. If not, then a broadband connection with a router than shares the signal wired/wireless to both will work.

To get airport extreme to work, you need an ethernet ADSL modem rather than the USB one that most UK ISPs give away. If you're in a cable area, you may want to consider that; most cable modems are ethernet and Blueyonder in particular seem very good in terms of speed/value. 'Phone' ISPs can be much of a muchness. I'd suggest looking atadslguide.org.uk's forums to get some real opinions. There are several who won't mention Macs on their support pages but they work perfectly well (ie BT broadband).

Do I need a sleeve? I will be carrying it on trains etc

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You'll probably want something, yes. Whether a sleeve will depend on whether you usually carry other bags that it will fit inside. If you carry a decent rucksack/briefcase/messenger bag, then yes, get a sleeve. If not, you may want to consider a case which will give it a little more protection.
Sleeve-wise, I've got a Tucano Second Skin (from the Apple store) which has been excellent.

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can try a few of these (see attached)

scarlet knees - if you don't mind, help another potential switcher out

what/where was the deal you found and how much

i just found a rev C powerbook 12" for 1099-200 in rebates at microcenter but did not open it yet, if the rev D deal you got is better i might return what i got

thanks

scarlets knees said:

will need a word processor i can import old Word documents into as i ain't retyping them all, do I need to get Office for Mac or will iwork do it or is there open source stuff?

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You could try openoffice - it's pretty good as a word processor, but isn't fully compatible with Word. I've tried writing functional specs for work using it, and they looked perfectly formatted to me, but got requests to fix the formatting when others viewed them in Word - so it's back to Word for me, unfortunately.

Another however is it's not supported natively in OSX and, as another poster said, is a X11 app. But hell, you can try it out and delete it if you don't like it.

advice

First of all, if you have children(or students in your family), then you usually can get discounts on software, specifically M$ Office (3 licenses for about 1/3 of the price of a normal license), but also many others.

"The Missing Manuals" series are always very good. Anything by David Pogue is good. I might recommend getting one of his iLife books for an overview of the free Apple iApps.

Also, use sites like this one, Macintouch.com, Macnn.com, and Macfixit.com. Mac users are normally a friendly and helpful community willing to help. Also look for a local MUG (Mac User Group) which hold monthly meetings, eager to help everyone. Many MUGs are held on or near college campuses.

Enjoy your journey to the better life

Don't forget you can buy just Word, makes all the difference when using files with pc folk (or just buy office, you will be glad you did). Also, look into .mac, they have a trial period free for X# days. iWork is ok if you use keynote, but if you need to send files to a pc, ms office is the honey.

no love on sharing the info on the deal huh?

scarlets knees said:

Thank you all for your advice. Just need to work out when I can afford to buy all the extra bits. Think MS Office may be my WP answer, wonder if I can get away with buying the student version....

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Welcome to the Mac family! Apple Works, which used to come standard on Macs, opens Word documents so you don't have to retype them Therefore, iWorks more than likely has the same feature. In my case, I go with MS Word because I MUST minimize the chance of technological errors in sharing documents with PC operators. Either way, I've never had a big problem though. Maybe wait and see if your Mac's standard apps will do it and then drop the dough on MS Office. Have fun!

scarlets knees said:

Applespider, on the extreme stuff, the PC is connected via a BT USB modem as we're not in a cable area. Might just go with the router first and wireless later.

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There's not a massive difference in price between a wired and wireless router now (certainly less than having to buy a wireless base station of some sort later). BT offer one (but probably at a higher cost than others) Netgear, Linksys and DLink all do wifi router that will work with both PCs and Macs.

Basically, you'd put the BT USB modem into a cupboard and forget about it, and use the wireless ADSL modem/router to plug into the phone box. Most wireless routers have a wired port that you can plug the PC into in addition to broadcasting the wireless signal for your PB.

Appleworks won't be on your PB - it's only on the consumer lines.