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gpgp16

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 13, 2007
5
0
Hey Guys,

Recently I gave my Dell laptop to my parents.
Thought of buying a Mac for me.(first Mac)
I have a few questions. Hope you guys will clarify

1) First question is should I buy a Mac now or should I wait for Leopard?
(I don't have personal laptop now)

2) I was listening to songs in an online website using my dell laptop.(I think that website plays songs using real media player). If I buy a Mac, will it play the songs in the same website? I downloaded the Safari windows version in my friends laptop to test the same. But it didn't play the song.

3) How much are the GTalk and Yahoo messenger are compatible with Mac?
 
1) If you need a laptop now, buy now. Else you could wait till October and save a little money.

2) Real player is available for OSX

3) 100% Compatible. Most people would probably use a third party client such as Adium to use GTalk and Yahoo.
 
1) First question is should I buy a Mac now or should I wait for Leopard?
Click to expand...

That's hard to say... Leopard comes out in October or so. Judging from Apple's past track record, it won't be 100% perfect when it first releases, but with a new computer with it installed clean and a minimum of carry-over apps that were not designed for Leopard, it should be fairly good. So it probably will not be as painful initially as Vista has been. I guess the easiest way to answer this question is to think about how you would feel about continuing to use the old OS when Leopard is out. I'm planning on sticking with Tiger for a while.

2) I was listening to songs in an online website using my dell laptop.
Click to expand...

Generally, yes, although you really have to say what the website is. Embedded Flash, WMP, Quicktime, and Realmedia are all supported with the appropriate codecs. The only time it doesn't really work is when you need to listen to a song that's in WMA with DRM or uses one of the codecs that requires WMP10 or greater on Windows. Most of those things don't work on anything but Windows. I don't run into a lot of that.

3) How much are the GTalk and Yahoo messenger are compatible with Mac?
Click to expand...

GTalk is supported as a Jabber client in iChat (comes with your Mac), or in otehr chat programs like Adium (which is an excellent multi-platform IM, something like Trillian on Windows). Generally, with respect to IM:

Google: iChat, Adium, etc, text only.
Yahoo: Yahoo's client (text, AV), Adium, etc (text only)
AIM: iChat (text, AV, mixed reports that AV works with Windows users... I have gotten it to work though)
MSN / Windows Live: MS' client (text only), Adium, etc (also text only), limited limited AV support
Skype: Skype's client (text, AV).

So for text IM, support is excellent. For AV with PC users, Skype is probably the best option.
 
If you're wanting a laptop, I'd go ahead and buy it. Both laptop lines were just refreshed. The only thing you would get by waiting is more apprehension that the line is about to be updated, again, and a copy of Leopard. Tiger works great, and it's stable too.

If you're wanting a Mini or an iMac, the situation is different. While I'm no expert, I'd say something will have to happen to the Mini soon. It will either be upgraded, dropped entirely, or something similar will come out in the form of an AppleTV (or maybe more than one of those will happen). Depending on which of these you think is going to happen, the Mini may or may not be a good choice to buy now. If you really want a Mini and think its about to go away, you may want to buy it. As far as the iMacs go, statistically, a refresh has got to be coming soon for them, unless they too are about to be dropped and replaced by a different line.
 
Thanks for those excellent informations guys. I was worried (because of not knowing may be) that Mac didn't support those stuff's.
Anyways I'm planning to buy a Macbook higher end model this weekend and wait for Leopard to evolve before upgrading.

I have one more question. I have my camera, creative mp3 player etc, Will I still be able to transfer photos and songs from those. Or those products are designed to support only Windows?
 
1) I'd personally buy now (especially if you need a laptop)-- the SR just came out, so it's hot and you'll feel like you've owned it long enough before the next upgrade comes. Also, Leopard will be really cool, but Tiger is awesome as well and runs great. Plus a newbie (like me) might not get all the use out of leopard that others will so it won't be an essential upgrade. I mean, I know lots of people still running panther.

2&3) listen to mkrishnan

And your camera and mp3 player will work fine as well.
 
You should have no problem with the camera. Every Mac comes with ImageCapture, an app that lets you download pictures from your camera to your Mac.

As for the Creative mp3 player, it must work, but I am not completely sure.
 
List of officially supported Creative players:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93548

Many other simple MP3 players just mount as a drive on the desktop, and you copy files onto them. In that case, iTunes may not recognize it, but you can still use it fairly easily (i.e. drag and drop songs from the iTunes window to the MP3 player).

Issues:

1) If your player does not support the AAC format, make sure to change the default format in iTunes. AAC and WMA are better, in the sense that they produce better output at a given bitrate than MP3, but MP3 is more compatible.

2) The Creative will not allow you to purchase music from the iTunes store and play it (I guess you could purchase it, burn it as an audio disc, re-rip it, and then put it on the Creative, but it'll be a nuisance).
 
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