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External Advice (and a mouse) for new MBP owner

P

piratezeke

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
13
0
Just got my MBP 15" 2.5 7200rpm yesterday. It's my first Mac.

I'm getting conflicting answers from people at the Apple Store near me and the Best Buy (where I have some unused gift cards). I want to get a 1TB HD to combine a couple smaller externals. I also want to buy one of these new portable HDs. I've been told that if I buy the external for using with the MAC, it won't work with the PC. Yet I took one of my present externals yesterday and plugged it into the MAC and it recognized it right away. I can't get rid of the PC right away (though that is the eventual plan) and I can't guarantee I won't occasionally need to share data between the two. There have to be others out there with the same issue. How are you attacking the problem?

Also any advice on a good mouse for the MBP? I have a Logitech I use on the PC that I like.

Thanks

Zeke
 
Most drives are preinitialized as NTFS. Your Mac (Leopard) will read from those drives, but not write to them (without additional software). You can reinitialize it with a FAT32 partition (of up to 32 gigs) and your Mac will read and write to it without additional software. If you initialize as a Mac HFS+ volume, then your PC will not be able to read or write the drive (without additional software). Your best bet would be to have a FAT32 partition on the drive (which, of course, limits you to 32 gigs of data on that partition).
 
^^ He explained it much better than I could have. Was just gonna say that I have an external drive which I used with both my PC at home and Mac at school. Had to format it with the Mac first for it to be able to read and write. The Mac wouldn't write to it while it had the NTFS formatting, but it could read it.
 
Thanks - Any brand recommedations that seem to work better with a Mac? I have a WD and a Maxtor on the PC which have given me no problems.

Zeke
 
Purchase a g-tech external drive format it for mac and use Macdrive to read and write to the drive while in windows
 
I'm interested in recommendations for mice as well... specifically...

Mighty Mouse vs. Logitech v470 (bluetooth) vs. Logitech VX Nano

I'm more interested in range I suppose... I'm looking for one to use with a Mini HTPC (12 to 15 foot distance).
 
I have an MX Revolution and I love it.

I have heard that laptop users love the VX Nano more than any other mouse they have ever used too though
 
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