Going to be a user in one week, last tips and advice greatly welcomed.

[iEugene]

It will be fine if they are only data discs, for both iPhoto and iTunes, all you will have to do is highlight the files, and then drag and drop. Sorted.

::20ROGERSC::

Thanks, looks like I've got some burning to do now.

 

[spinne1]

Thanks, looks like I've got some burning to do now.

You would save yourself a ton of time by not burning a bunch of CDs for backup. You should instead buy an external firewire enclosure, an IDE drive off ebay (120 GB for $45-60), a firewire card for your PC (super cheap off ebay), and simply use the firewire drive (formatted to FAT32) to copy all your data to. When you put it all on the mac, wipe the whole drive, reformat it to a Mac-only format (assuming you don't want to use it with the PC ever again), make a complete dupe of your internal HD using SuperDuper, and voila you have a backup of all your data as well as a bootable copy of your hard drive.

Then make DVD data discs of your music, movie, and picture files and store them off-site (a relative's house, etc.). That way you will still have them if your house burned down or something. A CD only holds about 650 mb, while a single layer DVD holds 4.7 GB, therefore for every DVD you burn, it would take seven CDs for the same amount of storage.

 

[iEugene]

You would save yourself a ton of time by not burning a bunch of CDs for backup. You should instead buy an external firewire enclosure, an IDE drive off ebay (120 GB for $45-60), a firewire card for your PC (super cheap off ebay), and simply use the firewire drive (formatted to FAT32) to copy all your data to. When you put it all on the mac, wipe the whole drive, reformat it to a Mac-only format (assuming you don't want to use it with the PC ever again), make a complete dupe of your internal HD using SuperDuper, and voila you have a backup of all your data as well as a bootable copy of your hard drive.

Then make DVD data discs of your music, movie, and picture files and store them off-site (a relative's house, etc.). That way you will still have them if your house burned down or something. A CD only holds about 650 mb, while a single layer DVD holds 4.7 GB, therefore for every DVD you burn, it would take seven CDs for the same amount of storage.

I didn't understand that, but either way I cannot do that. I will be flat broke for at least a week or more after I get my iMac, I barely had the cash to buy the blank CD's last night. I can't buy half of the things that was recomended to me on page 1 for at least a month. I have to find the free way out to everything. I don't have a DVD burner, only a CD burner, so using DVD's wouldn't work either way.

I was just about to start burning when I thought, what about using an iPod as an external drive? The "switch" page on the Apple.com site says it can be done. But what gets to me is, how could I use it as an external drive if the moment when I put my iPod into my iMac it would format it becauase the iTunes directory is blank...Or would it not do this?...If so this would save me a hell of a lot of time, (I assume I would have to somehow put my music as data on my iPod instead of media?)

 

[j26]

Would this be easier??

Thanks, looks like I've got some burning to do now.

Get an ethernet cable and network the computers. The one that connects a router to an ethernet port should be fine.

I can't exactly remember how, but I'm sure one of the bods here can help you how to do it. I managed it somehow before, so it mustn't be too hard.

Seems a lot easier than burning all night

 

[motulist]

Here's some simple advice:

1) Learning anything new takes time - The Mac OS is much better than Windows, but it is still a very powerful and deep system that will take some time to get used to, let alone master.

2) Dive right in - The only way to really learn something is to get your hands dirty. Don't be afraid to just try things out to see what they do (but do use some common sense and caution). The Mac OS mostly will not let you do something that could damage your system without warning you.

3) Nothing is perfect - Even though the Mac OS is better than any of the alternatives, it is not perfect. You will inevitably run into some problems and limitations.

4) Seek help and ask question - You will run into situations where you are not able to figure something out. Search the forums here at MacRumors to see if your question has already been asked and answered and also google for it. If you don't find a quick answer that way feel free to ask your question here, the MacRumors community is a friendly and helpful bunch.