A few q's about the imac

[tommy2008]

Hi there i have been reading this forum for the last couple of months as i am interested in buying a 24" 2.8 imac. I do however have a few q's which if could be answered would be very helpful to me. So here they are:

1. Do i need to have a wired mouse and keyboard the first time i boot the imac or can i use a wireless keyboard and mouse right from the very beginning?

2. Are there a lot of issues with the wireless mice and keyboards such as short battery life and problems using them in bootcamp XP?

3. Is it worth paying extra for the program that allows you to run XP at the same time as leopard in a window or is it better to just use bootcamp every time i need to use a windows based program?

4. If i buy the mac version of microsoft office will i be able to transfer files that were modified in xp to the mac version of word, excel etc? e.g if i started a word document at uni on xp word would i be able to transfer it and use it in mac office?

5. Also is it worth paying another £90 for another 2gb of ram?

Any other contributions that you feel would be neccessary for me to know would be very gratefully received.

Thanks,
Tom.

 

[204467]

1) Yes, you can boot with a wireless mouse and keyboard; just make sure they're on when you do (though I think the computer will tell you to turn them on anyway).

2) I don't know. I would think that the battery life of a mouse/keyboard would be the same no matter what the OS.

3) Do you actually need Windows enough to warrant that? I think unless you are using Windows as much as OS X you don't need a virtual machine. Plus, if you want Windows for gaming, definitely use Boot Camp.

4) Yes. Office for Mac saves in the same format as Office for Windows (I believe). However, I think the automatic file format for 2008 is .docx which I would change to .doc as soon as possible for more compatibility with older computers.

Hope that helps. For any information I didn't/couldn't give you, I'm sure a more knowledgeable person is already responding.

 

[mobilehaathi]

3. Depending on what you intend to use Windows for, virtualization can be a great solution. If you don't want to pay, VirtualBox is free open source software and quite excellent (be sure to install the guest additions).

4. Yes.

 

[pinkpen]

Hi there i have been reading this forum for the last couple of months as i am interested in buying a 24" 2.8 imac. I do however have a few q's which if could be answered would be very helpful to me. So here they are:

1. Do i need to have a wired mouse and keyboard the first time i boot the imac or can i use a wireless keyboard and mouse right from the very beginning?

2. Are there a lot of issues with the wireless mice and keyboards such as short battery life and problems using them in bootcamp XP?

I used a wireless mouse and keyboard my first use of my iMac and it worked just fine. I did find that the battery in my mouse died really quickly (and that wasn't even using bootcamp, so I switched it out for a wired mouse, and I find it's just a wee bit more responsive for what I'm doing.

4. If i buy the mac version of microsoft office will i be able to transfer files that were modified in xp to the mac version of word, excel etc? e.g if i started a word document at uni on xp word would i be able to transfer it and use it in mac office?

I do that too and I've had no issues. If you're overly worried, just save the file as a .rtf instead of a .doc and you can be sure it'll make the conversion.

 

[Muncher]

4. If i buy the mac version of microsoft office will i be able to transfer files that were modified in xp to the mac version of word, excel etc? e.g if i started a word document at uni on xp word would i be able to transfer it and use it in mac office?

Why would it be incompatible?

5. Also is it worth paying another £90 for another 2gb of ram?

That depends. Is that the best deal you can find? Remember to get one (1) 2Gb stick of ram, NOT two (2) sticks each 1Gb of ram. Very important, since the imac only has 2 ram slots and 1 is already filled.

 

[204467]

Why would it be incompatible?



That depends. Is that the best deal you can find? Remember to get one (1) 2Gb stick of ram, NOT two (2) sticks each 1Gb of ram. Very important, since the imac only has 2 ram slots and 1 is already filled.

Actually, on the iMac the OP plans to get, there are two 1 gig sticks of RAM in to begin with, not one 2 gig stick. So he/she should take that into consideration.

 

[Muncher]

Actually, on the iMac the OP plans to get, there are two 1 gig sticks of RAM in to begin with, not one 2 gig stick. So he/she should take that into consideration.

Oh, okay.