Musthave for a newbie

[dragonev]

Hello everyone, In 10 days I'm switching to Mac. I have never been using this platform so basically I have a number of applications which I would like to have on it. Maybe you can recommend something additional, but anyway.
1. Video player. Something similar to Media Player Classic, which eat everything. I heard about VLC, but there is no VLC now on iPad that's why I'm a bit afraid of it.
2. Something to work with torrents. I heard about uTorrent version for Mac, but on Windows I was on BitComet and Vuze. What would you recommend?
3. I got an iWork. Is it necessary to buy MS Office or there will no problems with sharing?
These are actually the main points.

 

[plaxico44]

Transmission is a great bit torrent client.

 

[Fishrrman]

"3. I got an iWork. Is it necessary to buy MS Office or there will no problems with sharing?"

Well, that depends.

With iWork, you can open Word docs in Pages and save to Word format as well. However, although compatibility is generally good, it may not be complete or perfect. The same goes for Numbers (and Excel) and Keynote (and PowerPoint).

For absolute, positive "have-to-have" compatibility with MS Office on the PC, you should have a copy of MS Office for the Mac.

Having said that, there are several "open source" office-type apps that may or may not be useful to you. All are free and worth a try. They are:
- OpenOffice
- NeoOffice
- LibreOffice (sp?)

I've found that for opening PowerPoint (pps) files, the presentation module in OpenOffice seems to work better than Keynote. Others' mileage may vary.

If you like iWork and it does what you need, it may be all you need.
If you find that you "need more", I'd give one (or more) of the "free apps" listed above a go at it.
If even they don't help, then it's time to think about getting a copy of "the real thing" -- MS Office for the Mac....

 

[dragonev]

"3. I got an iWork. Is it necessary to buy MS Office or there will no problems with sharing?"

....
If you like iWork and it does what you need, it may be all you need.
If you find that you "need more", I'd give one (or more) of the "free apps" listed above a go at it.
If even they don't help, then it's time to think about getting a copy of "the real thing" -- MS Office for the Mac....

thanks. I will try with iWork first. One more thing. I heard there are some programs to convert iWork files to Office files perfectly. Is it true?