Couple of questions

[JoeUnited]

Hi all, just bought a MBP and have some more questions:

Is the M$ Office program worth buying right now? Will there be a new one coming out soon? I only need this in case of sending documents to my school and opening them there...although i've heard iWork(?) can change it to a word doc. but so can a website openoffice.org I think? Keep in mind I don't need it now as school's done, but would like it soon.

Is time capsule a good option for backup? The only things I need backing up will really be music, pics, videos, and of course school papers.

How good is this HP photosmart printer you get for free? (model c4780)

I'm sure I'll think of more but that's it for now! Thanks.

 

[ECUpirate44]

Hi all, just bought a MBP and have some more questions:

Is the M$ Office program worth buying right now? Will there be a new one coming out soon? I only need this in case of sending documents to my school and opening them there...although i've heard iWork(?) can change it to a word doc. but so can a website openoffice.org I think? Keep in mind I don't need it now as school's done, but would like it soon.

Is time capsule a good option for backup? The only things I need backing up will really be music, pics, videos, and of course school papers.

How good is this HP photosmart printer you get for free? (model c4780)

I'm sure I'll think of more but that's it for now! Thanks.

The current version of MSO is 08 i believe. it would be worth waiting until after WWDC. I use iwork and i can easily export my papers in word if i needed to.

From what ive heard, time capsule is not the best back up solution. They seem to be failing after a few months of use. I went with a western digital back up.

Sorry, cant help you with the printer.

 

[alust2013]

I would wait on Office, I believe a new version is due fairly soon. I don't recommend Time Capsule, they are expensive, and from what I hear don't work all that well. Just get an external hard drive (western digital, iomega, etc), and use the time machine utility. As far as the printer, it's probably decent, but nothing special.

 

[thegoldenmackid]

Hi all, just bought a MBP and have some more questions:

Is the M$ Office program worth buying right now? Will there be a new one coming out soon? I only need this in case of sending documents to my school and opening them there...although i've heard iWork(?) can change it to a word doc. but so can a website openoffice.org I think? Keep in mind I don't need it now as school's done, but would like it soon.

Office for Mac 2011 is due out around the holiday season. I use both iWork and Office (Word, Pages, Excel and Keynote)

Is time capsule a good option for backup? The only things I need backing up will really be music, pics, videos, and of course school papers.

Not really. There are large reports of failure after 18 months. Here's my guide on external drives.

 

[JoeUnited]

Great info guys, but before I go reading it more carefully I have two other questions:

I won't be having any major business work or anything like that done on my MBP...just pics, videos, music, and papers for school. Is something like, say Carbonite, a better option than an external harddrive in your opinion...or is there a cheaper version suited for my needs? Like just sending my papers to my email, storing my music on my iPod, and my pics on my SD card. Do these drives have a life span or can it just be random?

And since I'll probably wait for the next Office, what can I do in the mean time for transferring my documents from Word format to iWorks or whatever comes with the Mac by default (and vice-versa from my Mac to Word)...Is openoffice.org an option? I've heard about this from another website, but I really don't know what it does.

sorry, I'm new to all of this

 

[NicoleRichie]

A few friends and myself may be the exception regarding TC failure. There were five of us that bought them the first day released at the apple store when initially introduced. Since then three of the five did our own HD upgrade. We have had no problems, but then again we may be the exception. Best of luck with whatever you decide to go with.

 

[rlav]

With office, I would use open office until the new office comes out, and you can probably get the new office cheap through your school tech store.

For time machine I just have a Maxtor drive from Best Buy, and that works fine, I partitioned it so I have the TM partition and a data partition.

With regards to the printer, if it similar to the one they gave out 2 summers ago (I think it is the same)it is a decent machine, get the XL ink cartridges though, they are expensive but last forever.

 

[JoeUnited]

Are websites like Carbonite just as good as going out and buying a harddrive? and is there a cheaper/better way for me to backup my data than buying an external HD (just don't have the money at the minute).

And off topic, but another question I have. I plugged in my iPhone, transferred my "Purchased Songs", but all of my others won't load. From what I gather, I need to boot up my old laptop and transfer all of that music to a burned CD-R...or did I miss something? My old laptop computer is very old and I don't know how long it will take to do that

 

[alust2013]

You'll end up paying more in the long run for online storage, and some of them have interesting policies and pretty limited storage. I would recommend eventually getting an external, they aren't too expensive (around $60-75), and you don't have to keep paying, and you get a lot more storage.

As far as transferring, if you use CD-Rs, it will take a rather long time, especially with a lot of music. I would recommend getting a cheap flash drive in the 4GB range if you don't already have one that is at least 1GB, and you just copy the files to the flash drive and move them to your new computer. You can also use the flash drive to back up your important files until you get a more permanent solution.