Using a Mac at home and a PC at work

Digm · May 29, 2007

My last question...

So in my eagerness to buy myself a MacBook, I think I'm buying one for my parents too (the base version). My mother is concerned of using a MacBook at home and a PC at work; I've told her that everything is interconnected, from flash drives to files. Obviously the Office suite (including MS Publisher) is compatible, but I have run into trouble when creating PowerPoint slides on a Mac and running them on a PC -- I get uncompressed TIFF file errors or something.

Are there any other things I should tell her about? I figure if she's going to have to learn a new OS, it might as well be OS X rather than Vista, but what are any potential pitfalls for someone who is pretty un-tech savvy.

mbrellisford · May 29, 2007

I don't know what her job is, but the problem that I encounter most (being a student [MAC at school, PC at home]) is FONTS. Windows and MAC use different fonts and unless both computer have the same OT font file, it totally screws everything up and project have to be done almost from scratch.

hopejr · May 29, 2007

mbrellisford said:
I don't know what her job is, but the problem that I encounter most (being a student [MAC at school, PC at home]) is FONTS. Windows and MAC use different fonts and unless both computer have the same OT font file, it totally screws everything up and project have to be done almost from scratch.

I've never come across that problem. All the fonts I have on my Windows machine at work are on my Macs at home because of Office. It's simple enough just to copy the fonts across though.

To the OP: Publisher files won't work on Office for Mac. The problem with PowerPoint is that you shouldn't drag images into slides on the Mac version. You need to Insert using the menus. Otherwise the Windows version won't be able to interpret the images.

swiftaw · May 29, 2007

Digm said:
I get uncompressed TIFF file errors or something.

Yeah, I ran into this problem too. The solution is to slightly edit the image in Powerpoint for mac before you save it. The Red-eye tool seems to serve the purpose best. This will force Powerpoint to save the image into a Win32 format that Powerpoint for windows will have no trouble with.

TraceyS/FL · May 30, 2007

Publisher is a problem as someone pointed out.

Fonts - gee, i have all of mine (4000?) on an external drive and share that between the sides.

If there is a doubt - just DL the "pc" version on the Mac side. It works fine!

drumforfun19 · May 30, 2007

swiftaw said:
Yeah, I ran into this problem too. The solution is to slightly edit the image in Powerpoint for mac before you save it. The Red-eye tool seems to serve the purpose best. This will force Powerpoint to save the image into a Win32 format that Powerpoint for windows will have no trouble with.

can't you just not save the pictures as a tiff to begine with?

Digm · May 30, 2007

These are all things that seem simple to you and me but my mom might not be able to handle it. It might be best that she sticks with a PC.

angelwatt · May 30, 2007

Well I use Mac at home and Windows at work and really don't have issues. One thing that I run into is seeing all those hidden files (ex. .DHStore) that Mac creates on my Windows machine, but that's only because I have Windows set to see hidden files, which is not the default setup so your mom would not likely have that problem. Very rarely I'll have something in PowerPoint that needs to be changed, but is rare. Your mom shouldn't have any real issues.

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Using a Mac at home and a PC at work

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