New To the Mac World

[Tbart09]

I am making the switch from a PC to a Mac. I am a high school student Junior about to be a Senior and I will be taking a computer to college with me.

Right now I am planning on buying the mid-range Macbook and get iWork pre-installed and will probably also get Office 2008. I am wondering what else I might need to get. What are the Apple "must haves"? I think I am going to get a .mac account? Anybody have ecperience with it? I understand that you can post pictures online with it and I would enjoy that so friends and family far off would be able to see them. Any comments and or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[forafireescape]

I've never found myself needing/wanting a .mac account, so if you want to save a few bucks, that might be a good place to do it.

Good idea getting iWork and Office. I have both and I'm glad I do.

[Koreos]

I'm going to start college this fall as well, and will be buying my first apple laptop then.

I plan on probably just getting iWork.. too much money if I have to buy both. I can always print to PDF to share with PC users.

Other apps I want to look into right when I receive my mac are:
- Cha-Ching. To keep track of my money and adjust to budgets.
- Schoolhouse. To keep track of assigments and school stuff. I hope it makes a good note taking app as well.

[AdeFowler]

I'd recommend .Mac if you can afford it.

The web galleries are fantastic and very easy to publish.
.Mac email is very nice... virtually spam free.
Syncing to .Mac is great, but may only be really useful for people with more than one mac.
The online storage allocation is now fairly generous (10gb) and you get a basic but straightforward back-up application.

[Magnus Reftel]

I think I am going to get a .mac account? Anybody have ecperience with it? I understand that you can post pictures online with it and I would enjoy that so friends and family far off would be able to see them.
I'm quite happy with Google's web albums (http://picasaweb.google.com). There's an exporter for iPhoto, so when you're done with an album, you just press export, select Picasa, and upload. Only downside as I see it is that you only get 1GB for free.

[apple4mark]

.Mac account is great as I have use it for 3 years now, I have never had any problems and everything works brilliantly and the online storage of 10gb where you can access anyway, anytime via idisk, exporting web pages, photos etc etc, it's nicely presented, I wouldn't be without it! As for cost £69 per year or £5.75 a month is peanuts for what you get!