How Do I fully switch to Macs?

[hexonxonx]

I tried switching to all Macs, even bought four of them in the past year. Went through all the last winter barely touching a Windows laptop after I got upset and threw it about five feet. It still worked though the DVD burner gave up it's life in the fall.

Beginning of the summer I finally gave into the temptation to switch that laptop on. I used it for a few weeks before the HD gave up it's life due to the "fall" above and replaced the HD. That same day I also went down and got practically the same HP laptop at CircuitCity, but now running Vista.

Now this, week, I sold my two Mac Notebooks and have replaced them with the HPs mentioned above. I still use my iMac (typing on it now) and my Mac Pro though it really gets 99% of it's use crunching numbers for seti@home.

I have always enjoyed using Windows and though I still think OS X is more reliable and virus free, I still can't do without Windows. I don't have anything that requires it's use other than just preference. I don't do any real work on any of my computers either, just internet, watching movies and TV shows and syncing iPods and iPhones and occasionally burning CDs.

You don't really need to fully switch to Macs if you don't want to. I'm right in the middle and am liking it. I still have four computers here after selling the other two Macs this weekend and four is probably still too many. I have one downloading stuff while I either watch videos or surf on the other. Vista seems very stable since I've been using it for almost two months now with no crashes, something I could never say about XP.

Anyways, just thought I would add my own worthless bit of nothing here.

 

[tshort]

I've mostly switched. I still use Windows XP (via BootCamp or VMWare) for Quicken. Intuit needs to come out with a better Mac version! The only other thing I use a PC for is the occasional PC-only game.

 

[gazfocus]

I tried switching to all Macs, even bought four of them in the past year. Went through all the last winter barely touching a Windows laptop after I got upset and threw it about five feet. It still worked though the DVD burner gave up it's life in the fall.

Beginning of the summer I finally gave into the temptation to switch that laptop on. I used it for a few weeks before the HD gave up it's life due to the "fall" above and replaced the HD. That same day I also went down and got practically the same HP laptop at CircuitCity, but now running Vista.

Now this, week, I sold my two Mac Notebooks and have replaced them with the HPs mentioned above. I still use my iMac (typing on it now) and my Mac Pro though it really gets 99% of it's use crunching numbers for seti@home.

I have always enjoyed using Windows and though I still think OS X is more reliable and virus free, I still can't do without Windows. I don't have anything that requires it's use other than just preference. I don't do any real work on any of my computers either, just internet, watching movies and TV shows and syncing iPods and iPhones and occasionally burning CDs.

You don't really need to fully switch to Macs if you don't want to. I'm right in the middle and am liking it. I still have four computers here after selling the other two Macs this weekend and four is probably still too many. I have one downloading stuff while I either watch videos or surf on the other. Vista seems very stable since I've been using it for almost two months now with no crashes, something I could never say about XP.

Anyways, just thought I would add my own worthless bit of nothing here.

Thanks for your detailed experience

It's good to know I'm not alone with this dilema. I tried switching when I had my MBP and went through a stage of using it for almost everything - what put me off was I used Final Cut Studio to create a 5 minute video when ended up, when complete, being about 11GB. I tried copying this to an external hard drive so it could be used on my churches Dell laptop and it just would not copy. I found this really frustrating and it just really wound me up. Since then,

I vowed to only ever use Windows to do video (if anyone knows a way round this problem which I assume is due to the limitations of the external hard drive/fat32 system, please let me know).

Since then, I bought decided to ditch my MBP altogether and bought a Dell XPS (which I returned due to numerous faults).

The problem is...no matter how many times I've tried converting and given it up...I just end up wanting to do it all over again - I just love Apple hardware, OSX is amazing (well Leopard is), and ya probably know the rest

I think I may go down the route of David Alison and buy a Macbook or MBP when they are updated, use that until the Mac Pro's are updated early next year, then plunge for a Mac Pro and replace my Desktop PC with the Mac Pro...but I'm still not convinced - It's a lot of dough to splash out if I end up 'giving up' again.

I think I will always keep a Windows laptop kicking around, and will probably still replace it every now and again even if I don't use it (I am very particular about computers and like to have good spec's )

I've mostly switched. I still use Windows XP (via BootCamp or VMWare) for Quicken. Intuit needs to come out with a better Mac version! The only other thing I use a PC for is the occasional PC-only game.

Yeah I agree that a good Quicken equivelant needs to be made for Macs...only problem is, in the UK you can't even get Quicken anymore (really annoying!!!)

I really need to sit down, evaluate the apps I actually use frequently and find Mac alternatives...whether it's better to do that before I buy a mac or after is anyones guess lol

 

[munson]

If you're a keyboard shortcut sort of guy, remember, it's "cmd" instead of "ctrl".

If you're not a keyboard shortcut sort of guy, I would suggest becoming one. They're actually REALLY useful in OS X. I could never get the hang of them on Windows. Perhaps that's just me though.'

Since I love the shortcuts, it's tough for me two switch between Windows/OS X, since I can never remember to use the different key...

 

[chrono1081]

Just switch. You'll be glad you did.

I'm a pc tech so don't think I'm bashing windows because its problems keep me employed but after using osx WOW was I impressed, I also sadly realized how behind windows is in simple things like mounting disk images. I can do it in mac by clicking it. I can do it in windows by downloading daemon tools and opening it and then clicking "Mount ISO" um...ya...MS you need that stuff built in.

I get constant crap from people in my department because I have a mac (but I also have 12 windows machines and 1 linux machine) and mac is my new favorite. I don't plan on buying a windows machine ever again since I can run windows on my mac.

 

[johto]

- what put me off was I used Final Cut Studio to create a 5 minute video when ended up, when complete, being about 11GB. I tried copying this to an external hard drive so it could be used on my churches Dell laptop and it just would not copy. I found this really frustrating and it just really wound me up.

Dude, are you really telling me that you have Final Cut Studio 2 and all the bells and stuff, and you dont understand the basic concept of "video codec" and "video compression" ?

I would highly recommend you to learn the basics before complaining. With Final Cut Studio there is "compressor" software included that can be used to make a batch video compressing jobs. Of course you can export and re-encode to what ever format you like even with normal Quicktime Pro (you have pro becuase you have Final Cut) ...

H.264 is good format or another mp4 variant. Even raw DVD mpeg2 format woudnt take 11 gigs. The big file size you were experiencing was the "lossless" format which is used DURING the editing. Always compress and encode your final output

 

[199708]

Dude, are you really telling me that you have Final Cut Studio 2 and all the bells and stuff, and you dont understand the basic concept of "video codec" and "video compression" ?

I would highly recommend you to learn the basics before complaining. With Final Cut Studio there is "compressor" software included that can be used to make a batch video compressing jobs. Of course you can export and re-encode to what ever format you like even with normal Quicktime Pro (you have pro becuase you have Final Cut) ...

H.264 is good format or another mp4 variant. Even raw DVD mpeg2 format woudnt take 11 gigs. The big file size you were experiencing was the "lossless" format which is used DURING the editing. Always compress and encode your final output

how do you get around the whole fat32 problem, and transferring over 4gig files to a pc and vice versa? using a harddrive.

Also, i was checking out the codecs that qicktime supports, and there is no divx. or would that be an *.avi codec naturally?

 

[gazfocus]

Dude, are you really telling me that you have Final Cut Studio 2 and all the bells and stuff, and you dont understand the basic concept of "video codec" and "video compression" ?

I would highly recommend you to learn the basics before complaining. With Final Cut Studio there is "compressor" software included that can be used to make a batch video compressing jobs. Of course you can export and re-encode to what ever format you like even with normal Quicktime Pro (you have pro becuase you have Final Cut) ...

H.264 is good format or another mp4 variant. Even raw DVD mpeg2 format woudnt take 11 gigs. The big file size you were experiencing was the "lossless" format which is used DURING the editing. Always compress and encode your final output

Hey. Sorry, but I do understand about video compression but for this particular project I did not want to compress the video OR audio as it was being displayed on huge screen using a projector - therefore I didn't want to risk losing the quality.

But yes, the way I got around the problem was infact compressing the video and ended up with a file size of 1.83GB and then burnt it to a DVD-R - this however, is not an ideal solution.

Any other solutions to get over the 4GB limit of Fat32 would be fab

 

[notjustjay]

Well, when I did it, I bought a 12" PowerBook to supplement my workhorse Dell laptop. I ran them both side by side for a while. At first I switched over the easy things -- my email, and web surfing -- while keeping the other stuff -- schoolwork, programming, web design, graphic editing with Paint Shop Pro -- on the Windows laptop.

I continued to use both side by side and after about a year I realized that the Dell was being used less and less -- maybe about once a week -- and that's when I decided to sell the Dell and just go for broke. I haven't looked back since (and that same 12" PB was by my side every day until I finally replaced it with a MBP this past summer. 5 years old and that PB was still good as my everyday computer!)

Obviously running Windows in Parallels, VMware or Boot Camp would be an option so you can continue to do Windows stuff while you make the switch. But just give it time, and see what happens. Nobody's FORCING you to switch completely to one or the other, maybe you'll be perfectly happy to keep using one of each.

 

[johto]

how do you get around the whole fat32 problem, and transferring over 4gig files to a pc and vice versa? using a harddrive.

Also, i was checking out the codecs that qicktime supports, and there is no divx. or would that be an *.avi codec naturally?

Best solution is by not using fat32

Other would be, you could split the files to a "packages" ...like multiple archive files without further compression. Then you could extract them after transferred back to the files system that supports bigger files.

Do you mean quicktime codecs while encode or decoding(playback) ?
Dont know what kinda "avi" files quicktime supports on default (btw, .avi is just an container like .mov), because i only use mp4 format(h.264) ..if i need to encode to another formats (wmv,xvid,divx,mpg) i use differend software example robust and "powerfull" encoding software is the "compressor" which is part of final cut studio.

If you are looking smaller alternatives check "visualhub" for easy encoding.

 

[johto]

Hey. Sorry, but I do understand about video compression but for this particular project I did not want to compress the video OR audio as it was being displayed on huge screen using a projector - therefore I didn't want to risk losing the quality.

But yes, the way I got around the problem was infact compressing the video and ended up with a file size of 1.83GB and then burnt it to a DVD-R - this however, is not an ideal solution.

Any other solutions to get over the 4GB limit of Fat32 would be fab

There are no perceived loss of quality when using good encoding codecs that are right for the job (resolution,bitrate) ...did you know that you can even compress BLURAY format's on the Compressor.


Easy solution for FAT32 limitations would be that everyone stopped using old microsoft tech and switched to Mac

 

[yippy]

Two Quick Imputs

Quicken/Microsoft Money issue:

I suggest a program called Money Dance. It isn't quite as polished as quicken for Windows but can handle almost as much unless you have some really complicated finances like having a business as well as your personal finances in it. It is tri-platform, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with all three exactly the same including the same file format so you can take one file and jump it around between your computers. I also believe it can import most Quicken files for an easy switch. There is a free trial of it so check it out. Moneydance.com.

Fat 32/4Gb issue:

This one unfortunatly is not as eligantly solvable. Essentially, the options are buy macdrive for you PC allow it to read and write to HFS formatted drives (then format your external to this and use it for file transfers). Buy Paragons NTFS-Mac software that will allow your Mac to read and write to NTFS (then format your external to NTFS). And lastly, use the network. Either share a folder from one computer to transfer or get a some sort of NAS to use as a go between.

 

[woodlandtrek]

Any other solutions to get over the 4GB limit of Fat32 would be fab

I would try using macfuse from google. It will allow you to read and write to NTFS on a mac. And it's free. No more 4GB limit, though you are still stuck using a windows file system.

 

[gazfocus]

I guess I do have a lot to learn about compression then

Thanks for all the suggestions RE the Fat32 4GB issue - I have heard of MacDrive but never thought of using it - Great idea though!

Ideally, I would like to try this idea because eventually I want to convert to Mac completely so would prefer to go with the Mac file system then use that on Windows rather than using a Windows file system on a Mac then having to reformat drives when I completely switch.

Just one question re NAS drives - what file system would it be cuz surely I'd have the same issue (i.e. Fat32 File system, etc)

 

[Hates]

I totally switched just over a month ago at home and haven't looked back but I still use Windows at work (I'm a developer). First thing I did was read The Missing Manual from cover to cover, which made a huge difference. As most people I used to easily get frustrated with OSX because I didn't know how to achieve the things I had so accustomed to doing in Windows.

I have found nearly all of the Mac versions of Windows programs to be better and endless enjoy using my Mac.

If there are applications/files which tie you to Windows, then making the switch will be hard if not impossible.

Don't be worried about running Parallels/VMWare Fusion. They take up hardly much space. You're not going to be installing every app that you used to use, as you would be using the Mac equivalent. It's only for those "essential" apps, so the footprint really wont be that large at all.

 

[yippy]

Just one question re NAS drives - what file system would it be cuz surely I'd have the same issue (i.e. Fat32 File system, etc)

The beauty of NAS is that the file system it uses internally is invisible to the computers connecting to it. The computers only talk to the controller using standar protocols and then the controller is what actually reads/writes to the drives themselves. Most use NTFS or a Linux files system, but as I said, it doesn't matter what they use as any computer can write to it.

An example, Apples Time Capsule I believe uses HFS + internally but Windows computers can also read and write to it with no software to install at all.

 

[gazfocus]

The beauty of NAS is that the file system it uses internally is invisible to the computers connecting to it. The computers only talk to the controller using standar protocols and then the controller is what actually reads/writes to the drives themselves. Most use NTFS or a Linux files system, but as I said, it doesn't matter what they use as any computer can write to it.

An example, Apples Time Capsule I believe uses HFS + internally but Windows computers can also read and write to it with no software to install at all.

Hey yippy, thanks for that info - I guess as an IT Techie, I should know shouldn't I? but glad I know now