Mac newbie having problems, please help.

Switching OS'es can have its ups and downs. None of them does things completely the same as any other, and there will almost always be at least one thing that was much, much easier on the OS you didn't like.

Now, though...

This doesn't sound normal... I think there is a tension spring adjustment inside the MM like in the previous Apple mouse (it's a little two-position slider switch under the plate where the battery goes). Try that. Otherwise, it's possible it's either damaged or really gunked up.

I guess my first question would be, is it different from what you experience in OS X on your Macbook? Safari and FF are fast in different ways, and preferences vary widely between the two -- there are tons of Mac users who swear by each. But if your iMac is behaving differently from your Macbook, then it's probably a sign of some kind of configuration or Leopard issue you could fix.

You can do this directly with Disk Utility or with Toast (I'm fairly sure). iTunes doesn't do it directly -- you can only rip and burn the rip. In Disk Utility, you have to image the disc and then burn the image (see here). I'm not personally very familiar with Toast, so I'll defer. I suspect there are also some very simple free apps that do just this one thing, if it's something that's really important to you (I can't think of having done it more than once in the past decade, so it's apparently not something I do a lot). See some of the options here.

Sorry, no clue here, because I am not that familiar with Leopard.

Good luck!

 

Suggestions?

Yeah... (1) If the solution to your problem involves holding a computer upside down and shaking it, you have not found the right solution to your problem

(2) it sounds like you may just have defective hardware. It's sad, when you get a new thing and it does not work, but it does happen. Be patient, grasshopper, and take it back to Apple.

Whether on Windows or OS X, though, if you've a situation like a meditation CD you burn periodically for people, it's much easier to just rip it into iTunes (... WinAmp, WMP, Songbird, whatever), keep a copy there, make it a playlist, and burn it from there. This is going to be much faster, and it's going to work just fine for this kind of app. Rip at a high bit rate if you're really concerned about the quality, or even rip Apple Lossless. But this saves you the hassle of going and getting the source disc, putting it in the Mac, burning a copy, etc, when you can just put in a blank disc, select the playlist, and burn it.

 

i think its more about the quality of DVD-roms, i.e. hardwares. my MB always has trouble reading some DVD disks. I don't think its a OSX issue

if you need to burn the same CD frequently, just copy it on your workable machine (seems a pc for you for now) into a *.iso, then keep several copies of *.iso on your windows/osx machines.

 

Sounds like one of those post-Katrina iMac's that were coming out of New Orleans real cheap.

Seriously though, how much RAM is in your iMac? You need more than 512MB to run Leopard. An extra gig is cheap and will make a world of difference. Also, how much room is left on your HD?

Did you use Apple's Migration Assistant to copy a bunch of stuff from your Macbook to your iMac? That might be a factor too.