new to the mac world... tips is appreciated

[alvinoolivas]

imm new to the mac world and tips is greatly appreciated. i have a new macbook pro running lion. I'm looking for apps to buy or download. anything or suggestions on what to get to enhance my experience would help, and from what i read text edit is like a replacement for microsoft word... is that correct and if so is there a better program to run for school papers...

 

[Looon]

If you're in college just go ahead and get yourself Office for the Mac. Pages has way too many formatting problems to use when everyone else uses Word which is what always happens

 

[likemyorbs]

Text edit is most certainly NOT a replacement for word, it very basic. I suggest either purchasing Microsoft Office for Mac, or the Apple iWork suite. The main problem with text edit is you can't save into .doc format so people who run word won't be able to open your documents.

 

[tersono]

A decent alternative to MS Office (and, better yet, free as they're open source) would be LibreOffice or Lotus Symphony. They can both load and save to MS Office document formats.

 

[Consultant]

Text edit is most certainly NOT a replacement for word, it very basic. I suggest either purchasing Microsoft Office for Mac, or the Apple iWork suite. The main problem with text edit is you can't save into .doc format so people who run word won't be able to open your documents.

Most software, including office, will be able to open RICH TEXT or PLAIN TEXT documents.

 

[andalusia]

Text edit is most certainly NOT a replacement for word, it very basic. I suggest either purchasing Microsoft Office for Mac, or the Apple iWork suite. The main problem with text edit is you can't save into .doc format so people who run word won't be able to open your documents.

This is ridiculous. TextEdit saves into .rtf or .txt which pretty much any word processing app will open. One of the stupidest statements I've read in a while. Anything will open a .txt file.

 

[Paulywauly]

It depends on what you are wanting to do with it tbh, but there are a few general things i'd recommend:

1: Some sort of Flash blocking app or browser extension (it will improve battery life if you browse the web alot)
2: VLC Player or Perian Quicktime plug in for movies.
3: If you havent already done so buy an external hard drive and configure Time Machine for backups.
4: If you are unsure of a good word processor and your needs are basic i'd try Pages, it's only £7 from the App Store. Its not free like some alternatives, but its cheap as chips, easy to use and is well integrated with Lion.

Hope some of that is helpful, but i found half the fun is figuring out exactly what works best for you. enjoy your new purchase and have fun getting it all just right!

 

[wsk]

Try open office

its free

 

[kolax]

1. Get Microsoft Office for Mac
2. Get Perian and Flip4Mac (QuickTime plugins that let it play anything - handy for internet videos)
3. Get VLC Player and use this as your default for viewing videos.
4. Set up Mail for your email accounts.

Check this.

Also, definitely check out: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/