Final Stages of Ibook planning

[Myradon]

From the looks of things, I will be ordering a 12 inch Ibook in about a months time. I just had a few more questions before hand.

1.Open Office. Does anyone use open office or the Neo office programs?
2.Are True Type fonts recognized by OSX? Where would I move my fonts to in order to install them?
3.Additional keyboard. Is a USB board recommended for stationary use? I have relatively large hands and don;t want to be overly cramped.
4.We will be keeping our windoze desktop for entertainment and media (for the time being). How difficult is setting up a RJ-45 network between the two machines?
5. When installing programs (eg. IE, Chess) can I elect what programs OSX will install for me? Looking at the included software there is much I don't want.
6.What am I missing? This will be my first Notebook/laptop computer and I want to be sure it lasts until I graduate (circa 2008)
7. Airport. As I understand it the Iboook comes wireless ready, why then would I want an airport docking station?
8. Will my lexmark X6150 workwith OSX? I don't see a driver
9. Improving ram. How many ram slots are there inside an Ibook? Does it include inbuilt ram that is not removable?

 

[shortyman]

4. This is very easy, just turn on Windows file sharing on both machines
7. The Airport docking station is the wireless hub, you only need this if you don't have one already.

 

[cubist]

I just got one (refurb) last week, so here are my answers:
1. I don't (others can comment). It came with Appleworks 6.2 (and nanosaur 2, and marble blast), and iLife 05, but not iWork.
2. I don't know.
3. Probably a good idea. Laptop keyboards are somewhat smaller.
4. Very easy. I think you can just cable the two together, but you might want to use a hub/switch/router.
5. All the software is already installed. But on a mac, if you don't want something, you can just drag it to the trash.
6. It should last to 2008 with no difficulty. Be careful inserting and removing cables. Treat it gently.
7. You might want one so you can move the laptop around and still talk to the PC, or use Airtunes to play music over your stereo. Who knows, it's up to you.
8. It might, I don't know. Mac OS X has "CUPS" so supposedly a lot of other printers will work. Lexmark is not known for their drivers, however.
9. There is 256MB non-removable, and there is one user-installable slot.

 

[Myradon]

I just got one (refurb) last week, so here are my answers:
1. I don't (others can comment). It came with Appleworks 6.2 (and nanosaur 2, and marble blast), and iLife 05, but not iWork.
2. I don't know.
3. Probably a good idea. Laptop keyboards are somewhat smaller.
4. Very easy. I think you can just cable the two together, but you might want to use a hub/switch/router.
5. All the software is already installed. But on a mac, if you don't want something, you can just drag it to the trash.
6. It should last to 2008 with no difficulty. Be careful inserting and removing cables. Treat it gently.
7. You might want one so you can move the laptop around and still talk to the PC, or use Airtunes to play music over your stereo. Who knows, it's up to you.
8. It might, I don't know. Mac OS X has "CUPS" so supposedly a lot of other printers will work. Lexmark is not known for their drivers, however.
9. There is 256MB non-removable, and there is one user-installable slot.

Well that explains most everything . Any more clarification on these?

1.Open Office. Does anyone use open office or the Neo office programs?
2.Are True Type fonts recognized by OSX? Where would I move my fonts to in order to install them?
6.What am I missing? This will be my first Notebook/laptop computer and I want to be sure it lasts until I graduate (circa 2008)
8. Will my lexmark X6150 work with OSX? I don't see a driver

 

[topicolo]

Well that explains most everything . Any more clarification on these?

2) Truetype fonts have been supported since Mac system 7.0 waaaay back in 1992
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/19593.html

 

[mkrishnan]

2) Truetype fonts have been supported since Mac system 7.0 waaaay back in 1992
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/19593.html

And to answer part two of that question, in your utilities folder will be a program called Font Book, which will help you manage them. It's nice to use it or something similar, because it lets you add fonts in "collections," so that you can go back and delete by collection, etc.

As for your keyboard question, you may also want to consider a bluetooth wireless keyboard. If you move things around, esp, it will be a lot easier on you.

Finally, with regard to (1), I've tried NeoOffice, and I'm personally not the biggest fan. I personally really like MS Office 2004. But it really depends on how heavy your use is, and the kind of work it is. I think if you work in a collaborative environment with PC users, and use graphical aspects of Word and Excel (tables, charts, figures, autoshapes, etc), you will not be completely satisfied with any of the OOO implementations, or with iWork, but only with MS Office. And Office 2005 in particular is very nice. I like it better than any version I've used on any platform, and it's honestly in my list of application packages that delights me with its thoughtfulness...which is a shocking thing to admit about an MS product.

If you work primarily by yourself, with more sales / marketing / graphical oriented stuff in a small business / home business environment, OTOH, iWork might actually be a really good option. It will not give you Office's level of interoprerability, but if you follow Apple's stylistic thinking, you can produce stunning product very easily...to a much greater extent than with Office or OOO.

 

[deebster]

3. Any old USB keyboard will work with OS X. I use an unbranded one made for Windoze boxes, but at $2 new it serves me well.

Sure the option (alt) and Apple (command) keys are switched around, but the free app uControl allows them to be remapped, and with a little sticker over the fugly windoze symbols all is good.

Furthermore, with my iBook the keyboard's 'Scroll Lock' and 'Pause | Break' keys work as brightness up and down.

5. There may be a printer driver included with your OS X install. There's certainly a fair few of them included on the disc(s). My crappy old Z25 printer still works with the Jaguar (OS X.2) driver, but as has been said, Lexmark are not the best on that score.