New to a mac need help please

[jc0481]

First off everything works fine *knock on wood". What are good applications to start off on the right foot. I have quicksilver installed now. It's amazing still learning how to use it. I installed onyx their were a lot of choices. What kind of applications should I try ? I was given the chance to install xp a friend of mine is in the military and can get xp for free for me a legal copy. But I chose to wait for vista. By the way I have a macbook (white) 2.0 ghz, 2 gigs of ram with the new core2duo processor. I have been using windows unfortunately since 3.1. By the way I don't mind paying for the software. Also know any good widgets that are really good and useful ? You know when I was at the local mac shop when they handed me my mac it was like all the planets came into alignment. You should have seen the smile on my face when I drove home from the store. I told recently a neighbor of mine I was getting a mac and he know I was in school. Oh he said are you going into graphics ? Anyways any advice would be appreciated.


JC

 

[livingfortoday]

I like freeware

First off, congratulations!

As far as software goes, it all depends on what you're looking to do. Off the top of my head, I would recommend Adium for instant messaging, and I loves me some Tigerlaunch. I also use Cee Pee You and Cleardock just for their niftyness. Oh, and Temperature Monitor. If I feel like ripping a DVD I'll use Mac The Ripper, and if I feel like encoding it, I'll use Handbrake. Sometimes I use ffmpegx if I wanna convert video to something else. I've been trying to get into Shiira, but will probably stick with Safari and Firefox for now. When I'm bored and want to download a torrent, I use Azureus, though lots of people here think it's a bit of a RAM-hog. For graphics work, I use GIMP, since it's free! And Neo Office for all my word processin' needs.

Uh... yeah!

 

[simontarr]

Well...!

As mentioned before, HandBrake rules when it comes to ripping DVDs. Another video app that I really can't live without is Visual Hub. It converts just about any video format into any other. I've yet to find an application like this on Windows. It rules!

For MSN, Adium is the best. Really customisable and just really good.

You're probably already familiar with iTunes. Make sure you organise all your music from the off, and it will serve you really well. If you just import stuff at random then it can get messy, but treat it with some love, and it's by far the best music app IMO.

Get hold of VLC if you can- sometimes Quicktime Player throws a tantrum and wont play something- VLC has played everything QTP couldn't for me.

<looks through apps folder>

Transmission is great for torrents. Nice and clean, easy to use.

Simply RAR is good for making/decompressing RAR files. I've used others but they have all seemed a little 'messy' for my liking, so I recommend you give this a try.

If you need FTP, Cyber Duck is pretty cool.

Can't think of much else off the top of my head- enjoy the Mac-ness- you won't look back!

 

[OrangeCuse44]

Life long windows user here, just bought a new Macbook about 2 hours ago online. Already counting the hours until it arrives. I was going to start a thread just like this so keep the apps and ideas flowing!

 

[livingfortoday]

Oh yeah, VLC is great. You'll also want Flip 4 Mac, which will let you play .wmv files in Quicktime, so you don't have to worry about getting Windows Media Player.