New mac owner/introduction.

[siddic]

Hi Folks!

New iMac owner here!

Just powered up my first iMac 27inch today, been a long time windows/linux user and my windows machine started having blue screens and hardware issues, so rather than go through the prospect of replacing part by part to find the issue (custom build). Decided to take the plunge and get something reliable for home-office use!

So figured since I'll be hitting these forums quite a bit, might as well register and say hello!

Few questions right off the bat, I apologize if they've been posted before, still looking through the forums.

1: The iMac seems to run a bit hot, how hot is to hot ? just so I know when not to be and when to be concerned.

2: I'm almost ashamed to say it but... I like eye-candy, really big sci-fi buff here, and was wondering if there is a theme system with macs ? I know its linux based and I can "tweak" it to boot up into KDE, but I'd like to stick with the mac os, but would also like to add a bunch of eye-candy to give it that "pop"

3: In regards to work, I spend much of my time nose-deep in spreadsheets (excel) and was wondering if iWork is comparable to excel, or if I should go ahead and invest in mac office 2011 (heard possibly there is some issues with Lion and office though)

4: I have a pretty nice 7.1 sound system I used to use on my windows machine, but since the iMac only has an input and a output jack, I'm looking at my options, either an external sound card (still hunting for one) that I can use, or possibly a system that plugs into the thunderbolt port, etc. Any recommendations ?

5: What should I do with my old windows machine ? was thinking target practice, but that felt a bit crude.


Hope to get to know you all!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

1. What is hot? Use iStat Pro to monitor your temps, which are more likely normal. As the back of the iMac is made of Aluminium, it works as heat dissipator, thus it feels warm/hot.

2. Not that I know of, but there is a bunch of customisation available I guess. I stopped doing that after a while, as it ****s up more than I gain from it.
Btw, Mac OS X is UNIX based, as is Linux, and where did you get that KDE part? Do you mean Terminal by any chance, as KDE stands for "K Desktop Environment" and is the GUI associated with many Linux distributions.

3. Excel, as Numbers is not near as powerful as Excel, and MS will release a Lion compatibility update soon (they already announced it).

4. Does your 7.1 system have an optical input? If so, look into TOSLINK, as the 3.5mm (TRS) audio out jack on the iMac is also a digital optical output.

5. I got rid of mine and sold it to a friend.

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[siddic]

2: Saw a site where it indicated KDE could be installed on a mac with quite a bit of elbow grease. Did not look into it further so not sure if it was accurate or not.

4: Sadly no

5: not sure if I should put such a burden on someone