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Somewhat Mac newbie ;)

D

Danmoore03

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 14, 2011
23
0
Hey guys, first off, first time poster, long time lurker, love these forums. Long story short, about 5 years ago i owned an iMac, and a macbook when i was into DJ'ing and Producing. Wife wasn't really keen on getting used to them, as she always was on windows, someone same for me, I loved it myself lol.
She had problems as she is a college student, also back in school now for her masters. All her classes were based off of the windows format for papers and whatnot. Never really searched deep for the anwser as i'm sure using office for mac now would be the best solution? We ended up selling the machines and went back to PC machines.
Now we own one dell inspiron notebook, i hate it, its a clumsy machine, love the fact my black macbook was simple and clean. Also I built a PC myself, i7 processor, 28" monitor, ATI 5800 video card, 6gb ram etc. I don't game anymore unless its on my console and possible a WoW relapse here and there, but nothing graphic intensive for the most part. Kind of finding it pointless to have my machine anymore. I'd rather switch back to mac.
As far as my questions are, i'm looking at getting her a macbook pro, baseline 13", light, portable and small so she can take to clinicals for school and write her random papers on, using office for mac of course, which will allow her to correspond with her class formats with everything being word documents? Am i right?
For me, I am looking at the 21.5" iiMac, baseline, my two major concerns are speed, going from an i7 down to an i3, but i only do basic browsing on the net, maybe some photo stuff, but nothing heavily intensive. Which i would assume i would see little to no difference, because what i do on my i7 windows machine now, is nothing intensive, so really I am not using my CPU to nearly its full potential. My other concern, is going from my 28" monitor downsizing that much. I've become used to the larger screen but has the same resolution as the 21.5". Its starting to stress my eyes, as i only sit an arms length from the screen. So downgrading would probably benefit me? Lastly, is the stock graphics card the iMac comes with do OK in MINIMAL gaming, such as starcraft 2, maybe handle a WoW relapse and some steam mac games?
Thanks so much ahead of time, sorry for all the questions :).
 
Also if it helps. Another reason i want to make the switch is eliminating clutter, love simple setups, tired of dumping 1700 into a gaming PC and in 10 months its worth nothing. We live about 15 minutes from an apple store, and will be getting a student discount if that would sway in helping on upgrading some stuff other then what i listed i was looking at, as i do not know what the apple student discount is. We will be heading to the store tomorrow afternoon to look around, probably won't come home empty handed lol.
 
Danmoore03 said:
Hey guys, first off, first time poster, long time lurker, love these forums. Long story short, about 5 years ago i owned an iMac, and a macbook when i was into DJ'ing and Producing. Wife wasn't really keen on getting used to them, as she always was on windows, someone same for me, I loved it myself lol.
She had problems as she is a college student, also back in school now for her masters. All her classes were based off of the windows format for papers and whatnot. Never really searched deep for the anwser as i'm sure using office for mac now would be the best solution? We ended up selling the machines and went back to PC machines.
Now we own one dell inspiron notebook, i hate it, its a clumsy machine, love the fact my black macbook was simple and clean. Also I built a PC myself, i7 processor, 28" monitor, ATI 5800 video card, 6gb ram etc. I don't game anymore unless its on my console and possible a WoW relapse here and there, but nothing graphic intensive for the most part. Kind of finding it pointless to have my machine anymore. I'd rather switch back to mac.
As far as my questions are, i'm looking at getting her a macbook pro, baseline 13", light, portable and small so she can take to clinicals for school and write her random papers on, using office for mac of course, which will allow her to correspond with her class formats with everything being word documents? Am i right?
For me, I am looking at the 21.5" iiMac, baseline, my two major concerns are speed, going from an i7 down to an i3, but i only do basic browsing on the net, maybe some photo stuff, but nothing heavily intensive. Which i would assume i would see little to no difference, because what i do on my i7 windows machine now, is nothing intensive, so really I am not using my CPU to nearly its full potential. My other concern, is going from my 28" monitor downsizing that much. I've become used to the larger screen but has the same resolution as the 21.5". Its starting to stress my eyes, as i only sit an arms length from the screen. So downgrading would probably benefit me? Lastly, is the stock graphics card the iMac comes with do OK in MINIMAL gaming, such as starcraft 2, maybe handle a WoW relapse and some steam mac games?
Thanks so much ahead of time, sorry for all the questions :).
Click to expand...

1) A 13" MBP with Office 2011 will be just fine for that (The only reason I even have a PC is because Im addicted to Digital Ink - Im a College undergrad incidentally).
2) An iMac for you should be fine as long as it has the performance you want, and its graphics should be OK (as a Benchmark I run Sims 3 on my 1.83CD Mac from 2006 and it runs OK, not brilliant but OK, so a current iMac should be just fine).
 
I was looking around today. iWork looks like it reads word documents if it comes from pc or Mac. Am I correct. Biting the bullet tomorrow I believe.
 
Danmoore03 said:
I was looking around today. iWork looks like it reads word documents if it comes from pc or Mac. Am I correct. Biting the bullet tomorrow I believe.
Click to expand...

Right now, I really recommend looking at office 11 for mac. It's a great update from office 2008
 
To the OP, there is also openoffice; http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ for the mac, it can open & save word documents, it's open source & it is free, I have used this for my school papers on my macbook pro for school. It is sort of the generic free alternative to Microsoft office, but has many of offices same functions.
 
Go with iWork.

Pages is good. Numbers is Good. Keynote is AWESOME. You will save tons of money too.
 
Open Office & Office 2011

I would suggest using Open Office and Office 2011 together. It's easier to share the documents if you finish in Word/Excel but I write everything in Open Office first.

You might be able to get Office cheaper through your school; it's $114 on Amazon right now which isn't too bad considering all you can do with it and for how long you will use. Yes, you can save some money by going with iWorks but it sounds like you are already spending $2400 or so on hardware.
 
Synthion said:
Pages is good. Numbers is Good. Keynote is AWESOME. You will save tons of money too.
Click to expand...

To save even more money, remember to get them through the Mac App Store. (I don't believe there's an education discount on the physical pack that'd match the App Store pricing though I may be wrong).

Also, iWork 11 will (should) be released quite soon which, I imagine, will bring even more compatibility with Office file formats.
 
grapemac said:
To save even more money, remember to get them through the Mac App Store. (I don't believe there's an education discount on the physical pack that'd match the App Store pricing though I may be wrong).

Also, iWork 11 will (should) be released quite soon which, I imagine, will bring even more compatibility with Office file formats.
Click to expand...

It depends which Education store you get (Yes, there is the general one, but certain institutions, such as my Uni, get things even cheaper - so for me iWork in a box is 36 quid, and that is 3p more than getting it from the appstore - so it can depend (Personally Id rather spend the extra 3p and have it on disc, but thats just me).
 
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