I am proud to finally say....im now a mac user!!

M

marknicholls

macrumors 6502
My sexy powerbook arrived today!!

Ok, put my in front of a windows PC and i know it like the back of my hand.....put me infront of a mac and i am a beginner, so its all new to me, so i have a few silly questions

First i would like to say how impressed i am with it, it is a G4 550, 512, 40GB, i appreciate this is not the fastest spec, but i have been using this for 2 hours now, and it really is fast

The 2 things that reakky impressed me are Expose - WOW, and the amazing connectivity! I turned my powerbook on for the first time, and was instantly connected....it found my router in seconds.....in fact i said to my friend, lets see how we get this baby online......and he said "whats that signal looking button on the top right of the screen.....does that mean its connected?" and to our amazement it was. Brilliant.

Now then, i have the following CD's and i have no idea what they all are, i will list them exactly how it says on the cds

Software restore, 1 of 2
Software restore, 2 of 2
Mac OS Xinstall
Mac OS9 install
2.2.650
OS1
OS2

Why so many cds?? Could someone tell me what i need to use, and how i format my HDD and do a clean install of my OS (10.3.5)

Any help is great

Thanks
 
the two software install disks have all the software tha came on the 'book when it was new from apple. the osx cd is your system cd use that to clean install the os 9 cd contains the old os and you can use it to setup a dualboot(os9 osx) machine.

i have no idea what the others do
 
but my restore and mac osx cds are only version 10.1, my system is running 10.3.5

will this get updated once i have installed it? via the net? or do i need a different cd?
 
You need separate CDs for major upgrades 10.2 and 10.3, so if you use the 10.1 CD, you won't be able to upgrade to Panther (10.3) without having a copy on CD.
 
i need a book or a good website to aid me
its silly things like deleting a program....there is no add/remove. i heard someone say if you delete the icon, it gets rid of the entire app? and creating icons on the desktop? easy things that are second nature in windows
 
marknicholls said:
i need a book or a good website to aid me
its silly things like deleting a program....there is no add/remove. i heard someone say if you delete the icon, it gets rid of the entire app? and creating icons on the desktop? easy things that are second nature in windows
Click to expand...

They're only "easy" in Windows because a program does it for you, because half the time the executable is buried so deep in sh*t that you'd be strapped to find it in that damn Program Files folder. At least this way you have control over how it gets deleted, in the event that some uninstaller deletes the wrong thing for you.
 
marknicholls said:
i need a book or a good website to aid me
its silly things like deleting a program....there is no add/remove. i heard someone say if you delete the icon, it gets rid of the entire app?
Click to expand...
Yea, in most cases, or just its folder, like MS Offce just installs by dragging its folder off the CD to your HD, thats it.
 
You also want to memorize the 'ctrl-alt-del' equivalent 'command-alt-esc'. This will let you force quit a program that's not responding. If the Finder itself is frozen you have to use this to restart it.
 
Usually, dragging the icon of the application will do fine since most are self-contained. However, some others do keep resources in your Library (usually either its top level or under ~/Library/Application Support). You might want to delete preferences files as well, usually located at ~/Library/Preferences.
 
O'Reilly usually has good technology-related books. I've never read it but I've heard their Mac OS X: Missing Manual is a good read. Try mac.oreilly.com
 
Hey thanks! I never knew what the Mac equivilant to ctrl alt del was. I couldn't figure out what that crazy little symbol was.

As for removing apps, I usually just type the name of it in Finder and then delete everything that comes up that i know is related to the app.

Mike
 
Hey - looks like you had all your questions answered. Congrats on the Mac - and have fun! I know it was a long road to get here....
 
Brother Michael said:
Hey thanks! I never knew what the Mac equivilant to ctrl alt del was. I couldn't figure out what that crazy little symbol was.

As for removing apps, I usually just type the name of it in Finder and then delete everything that comes up that i know is related to the app.

Mike
Click to expand...

heh, wow, force quit can be useful. Well, only if you keep such a messy system as mine. What I wonder, though, is if the other way of force quiting, that being from the dock, means you can use the dock command tab way of going through applications, and modify the q to quit for a force quit? Anybody know?
 
dontmatter said:
heh, wow, force quit can be useful. Well, only if you keep such a messy system as mine. What I wonder, though, is if the other way of force quiting, that being from the dock, means you can use the dock command tab way of going through applications, and modify the q to quit for a force quit? Anybody know?
Click to expand...

If you command click the application you want to force quit in the dock you get the contextual menu. If the app is not responding or launching it force quit should appear as an option, just click it and you're done. Is that what you mean?

Edit: re read your post, i think it should work in the same way but i just tried it with illustrator and it doesn't! :eek:
 
dontmatter said:
heh, wow, force quit can be useful. Well, only if you keep such a messy system as mine. What I wonder, though, is if the other way of force quiting, that being from the dock, means you can use the dock command tab way of going through applications, and modify the q to quit for a force quit? Anybody know?
Click to expand...

I don't think that will work but another way of force quitting is to hold click the icon in the dock of the application you want to force quit. A contextual menu with force quit will then appear.
 
Congrats about your first mac.. its been 1 year since I bought my first mac and that feeling is still warm with me.. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as we all do..
 
oops! yeah sorry I forgot congrats on your new mac, I'm sure you'll enjoy having a computer that actually works all the time as opposed to most of the time!
 
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