recently bought ibook

Just so you know.... The guys and gals here are real sharks.
If you don't get my drift check out this thread.
Yup.
I don't want your first experience with Macs to be a bad one.
But most of us have already seen an iBook....
If you want some opinions for for programs, you may get better results if you asked for more specific programs. Like a word processor.


Your battery will go up and down, depending what setting you have it on.

Max out the RAM!

Miguey said:

i need to know waht are some good basic programs i should use? .

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... to do what?

Just so you know.... The guys and gals here are real sharks.
If you don't get my drift check out this thread.
Yup.

Click to expand...

Your just looking for the negative!

Congrats on the ibook !
GREAT choice for your first forray into mac land. I have had my current ibook for well over two years - no problems. A RAM upgrade is a nice little treat, but there's no rush. I waited over a year, and then it was like having a new machine.

Some of the basic / extra software that helped me -
MS Office
Photoshop - at least Elements

that's all I needed for years ! If you are interested in digital art - video - etc, there is a lot more out there.

Enjoy !

a few tips:

- calibrate your battery by letting it run all the way down until the computer sleeps and then plugging it in

- use adium for instant messaging http://www.adiumx.com

- http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard for new widgets

- http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery

- search these forums for answers to your questions; there's a ton on here!
enjoy!

ibook30 said:

Your just looking for the negative!

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Thats my job, citizen. Thats my job.....

Versiontracker is a great source for free/low-cost Mac apps.

i cant answer your question about burning DVD 's and how long it takes...but i think i can answer the .avi question: make sure that the latest quicktime version is installed. If that doesnt work, find a plug-in that supports .avi. If that still doesnt work, i would say that its a different type of file...such as a .wmv inside a .avi 'shell'. To see if this is true, try playing different types of .avi files and see if they work

try these!!

Miguey said:

i need another answer,
and also, when i try to play this or another of a .avi kind it says that i need some necessary quicktime software and that it is missing, any answers?

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Firstly, welcome to the Mac community!!

Quicktime doesn't always play avi's. Download VLC. It opens every video file except Window$ media files. You need Window$ Media Player for those.

A good source of programs is VersionTracker. Plenty of free stuff there.

Have fun,



aussie_geek

Congrats on the iBook, they're great machines.
As people have said, versiontracker is a good way to find apps, VLC is a must for video (even allows you to watch .vob files off a dvd!), Offive for mac is actually good (I know M$ blasphemy, but it is good), iWork is good, if only for keynote. Can't comment on encoding dvd on ibook as mine just has the combo drive, but on my mom's new iMac it took about an hour, on my peecee it takes about 2-3hours... Oh toast is a great program for burning... Adobe creative suite is nice if you need design stuff, I haven't tried final cut yet but if you can get a copy of adobe premiere it does work on the iBook, just takes a while (meaning patience and willingness to hear the fans howl), to let things come together.
Other free software which I will not go into that I use:
Frostwire
Azerius
gdisk
google earth
fetch
goliath
onyx
flip4mac
lego digital designer
vectorworks architect 10

obviously not every program listed is for you...

aussie_geek said:

Firstly, welcome to the Mac community!!

Quicktime doesn't always play avi's. Download VLC. It opens every video file except Window$ media files. You need Window$ Media Player for those.

Click to expand...

But even Windows Media Player doesnt function all that well...

I've only downloaded flip4mac and I have yet to run into files that I can't play.

Miguey said:

when i placed my newly burned dvd inside the dvd player, it just stood black, didnt play my movie, it would only play one screen which was my like opening, i opened all the folders and it never played, any ideas?

p.s. my dvd player is dvd-r and my so was my disc

Click to expand...

When using iDVD to burn movies (that you created, usually with iMovie), it's usually better to "Save to Disk Image" first. That way, the Mac will do the encoding (which is time consuming) separately from the burning. If there's a problem, you won't make coasters.

After creating the Disk Image, you can use DVD Player to test out your creation. Make sure the menus all work and things look right.

If everything's OK, then use Disk Utility (found in the Applications/Utilities Folder) to burn the image to a DVD-R. This is helpful when you want to burn mulitple copies of the same movie (i.e. one for you, one for parents, etc).

Hope this helps.

Oh yeah, as for software: