Help,Tips & Advise to a new mac user.

[Reuven]

Well I did it! I converted!

After 6 months of investigating which mac I should get I just ordered a New PB 15" 1.5Mhz G4 with a 128 Graphics card +SuperDrive.

I have never owned a notebook or a mac ever so got a few questions:


a. Are there any good anti spam programs I can get for my mac ?

b. Should I keep my PB on Sleep mode & never turn it off ?

c. Once in a while is it good to drain the battery ?

d. Hows easy is it to setup your internet connection with an Airport ? ( I have cable internet)

e. Like windows with OS Panther is there any scan disk & defrag program I can use so I can keep the HDD in good working order ?

f. Any other hints,tips or advise you can give to a newtimer to the mac & PB scene!


Thanks / Regards,

Reuven

 

[entropy1980]

a. Are there any good anti spam programs I can get for my mac ?

The built-in Mail program has a great Spam filter and works very well once it's trained.

b. Should I keep my PB on Sleep mode & never turn it off ?

Umm I never recommend never turning off any laptop, as laptops don't dissipate heat as well as desktops do leaving it on I would think would be hard on it. but that's my $.02...

c. Once in a while is it good to drain the battery ?

There are so many schools of thought on this one I won't touch it... I drain mine completely though at least once a month.

d. Hows easy is it to setup your internet connection with an Airport ? ( I have cable internet)

Mind numbingly easy! It detects them automatically and you supply WEP if necessary easy than any other machine I have ever used!

e. Like windows with OS Panther is there any scan disk & defrag program I can use so I can keep the HDD in good working order ?

There is DiskWarrior and Norton... my understanding is the built in disk utility should be all you need though.

f. Any other hints,tips or advise you can give to a newtimer to the mac & PB scene!

You'll see that the transition from Windows isn't that bad, in fact i was impressed by how nice OS X plays with Windows ( I am network administrator for a 500+ user Windows/Novell network).

 

[HexMonkey]

Mac OS X handles defragmentation automatically, so you don't need to worry about that. You should try and keep at least 10% of your hard drive space free though, otherwise the OS will slow down a bit and it could get slightly fragmented.

If you do run into problems, a good start is to repair permissions. You can find this in Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. Select your disk and click the 'Repair Disk Permissions' button. Each file on a Mac OS X system has a set of permissions, with information on who can do what with the file. If these get corrupted, strange things can happen, but repairing permissions often fixes these.

Unlike Windows, applications tend not to put files all over the system, so you can generally uninstall things just by dragging them to the trash. And if you encounter problems with an application, you can delete its preferences file easily, which will often fix problems. Simply go to your home folder and then to Library/Preferences/, and delete the file. It usually has the naming convention 'com.[company name].[application name].plist'.

If you have any other questions/problems, don't hesitate to ask.

 

[Reuven]

Thank you both for your help! Im sure I will have plenty of questions to ask! The only problem there might be to many!

I just hope its easy to get out of the windows xp frame of mind and hop in to Panther.

Overall is Panther really easy to use, compared to the windows environment ?

 

[entropy1980]

Thank you both for your help! Im sure I will have plenty of questions to ask! The only problem there might be to many!

I just hope its easy to get out of the windows xp frame of mind and hop in to Panther.

Overall is Panther really easy to use, compared to the windows environment ?

I think you will be suprised how easy the transition is. Trust me this is coming from someone who works on Windows machines alllllllllll daaaaaaaaayyyyy looooooonnnnnggg! Are things different? Yes. Are the basic ideas the same ? yes click things they open drag things and they follow oh and you can use a 2 button mouse and right click works just in Windows!

 

[thirteen1031]

Missing Manual

You might be interested in this book:


http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/macxmmpanther/

Pogue's Missing Manual books are entertaining, informative and filled with tips and tricks. This one also included a chapter for switchers. A good way to really get to know Panther and all the tricks you can make it do.

 

[powerbook4me]

You might be interested in this book:


http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/macxmmpanther/

Pogue's Missing Manual books are entertaining, informative and filled with tips and tricks.

David Pogue, that you?