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Started new business am worried about changing to Mac

O

OzSeb

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2007
7
0
I’ve just started a new business and have wanted to change from PC to Mac forever now. I have read lots of material, been to the Apple Store and still just don’t know.
I am just worried about the most basic of things; I have used PC’s all my life and feel that if I change to a Mac now I have to start all over again, just getting a feel for the whole OS, (putting folders where I want them, settings, etc…) if I change I definitely don’t want to run windows. Can any of you comment on your experiences if you have been in a similar situation or make some recommendations?
 
Hi. What kind of business? What will you be doing on your computer? What Mac are you considering?

I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine, but it does depend on what your circumstances are.
 
Hi SouthernBoy,

Import/distribution in europe. I am thinking of a MPR. For me I need to be able to write/pull up invoices, company documents, pictures of our products, official emails with comapny stationary, just basically keep a tab on 'everything.'
I like to keep everything organised and am worried that with learning new OS this will be very time consuming/difficult. Also that most companies we associate with are running PC's, for example the company that is designing our website. Compatability and my 'thought' compatability with Mac-PC's is worrying.
 
We have purchased new invoicing application, and have put it on the PC's but we are not fully committed to any specific software just yet. Are those type of business Apps hard to find for Mac?
 
Hey :)

I switched our entire business to using Macs last summer, after having used Windows (and DOS) all my life.

Everything was easy. Even setting up the client-server network was relatively straightforward. Most of our invoicing system is (locally) web-based so it's platform independent anyway, and I use Excel from Mac Office a lot. Fortunately the new Mac Office will be out soon, which will be fantastic compared to the old one.

If you do have any Windows specific software then just buy a cheap OEM copy of Windows XP Professional and run it in Parallels. That's what we do, anyway. I use Sage for our UK Payroll and everything is seamless, including sending payslips to the network printer.

The results? We have a stable, reliable computing environment that requires almost zero maintenance. Productivity is increased, and for a busy person such as myself the window management that OS X provides is just an incredible time saver. When I'm working with a lot of windows on my 30" ACD it must look a bit like a scene from Minority Report ;)

One word of advice. Apple doesn't have (in the UK, anyway) enterprise level technical support like other major computer manufacturers do. As such, you can expect it to take a little while to get repairs and replacement parts. Never be in a position where every machine you have is 'critical', always have a plan in place for what to do if something needs to be repaired or replaced. It's generally good practice to not rely on support contracts for when a failure happens anyway, but Apple's lack of enterprise support means you really need to be aware.
 
Hi miniConvert,

Sounds like you had an easy transistion. When is this new version of Office meant to come out? Did you have any compatability issues with either files/programs that you work with/received from clients or contracted firms?
 
Don't try to learn everything online. There are plenty of great books that'll get you up to speed in no time.
 
If I would start a business I would definitely use Mac OS X - no doubt about it.

But to help you we should have more details. How many people are working in your office ? Only in one building or scattered around planet earth ?

What do your customers and suppliers use and so on and so on.
 
I'm just going to note that OS X is definitely different to Windows and it's going to be a learning experience. When I moved to the Mac from XP years ago I bought a copy of David Pogue's "Mac OS X The Missing Manual". I found this book to be both very informative on how everything works and entertaining to read, which is important since technical books can tend to be a bit dry. I'd highly recommend having a read through either the Tiger version or the new Leopard version (released on the 31st Oct, according to Amazon UK) of these books since they'll explain things that Mac users take for granted but will be strange to Windows users, such as how to install applications that you've downloaded.

Regardless of how strange some things may seem I can also assure you that it's a lot of fun getting to grips with a Mac and it's not often that you can say that about a computer.
 
Kelmon said:
I'm just going to note that OS X is definitely different to Windows and it's going to be a learning experience. When I moved to the Mac from XP years ago I bought a copy of David Pogue's "Mac OS X The Missing Manual". I found this book to be both very informative on how everything works and entertaining to read, which is important since technical books can tend to be a bit dry. I'd highly recommend having a read through either the Tiger version or the new Leopard version (released on the 31st Oct, according to Amazon UK) of these books since they'll explain things that Mac users take for granted but will be strange to Windows users, such as how to install applications that you've downloaded.

Regardless of how strange some things may seem I can also assure you that it's a lot of fun getting to grips with a Mac and it's not often that you can say that about a computer.
Click to expand...

According to Amazon US, Pogue's book is being published on Dec. 15, which seems more likely.
 
Hi CmdrLaForge,

Employees are raoming the landscape europe and asia. Most likely will need inventory software for warehouse. Some documents arrive in original languages also with different hypenations etc. Does Mac also use truptype fonts as business has setup it's on 'image' on stationat etc?
 
Hi Kelmon,

Thanks for the advice on reading some literature. To tell you the truth I haven't everything I have read has been on the net. As you mentioned simple tasks as installing downloads and new applications is 'all' new if I were to convert. I think I will post another thread asking people for some book recommendations.
 
OzSeb said:
Hi CmdrLaForge,

Employees are raoming the landscape europe and asia. Most likely will need inventory software for warehouse. Some documents arrive in original languages also with different hypenations etc. Does Mac also use truptype fonts as business has setup it's on 'image' on stationat etc?
Click to expand...

Do you have a very small business were you run your inventory in spreadsheet or will you use an ERP System like SAP or Oracle or Navision or whatever ?

If your employees aren't located in one place the new features in Leopard iChat will come in Handy e.g. desktop sharing and so on. There are of course more collaboration tools available from 3rd partys e.g. Skype and others. Really depends on your needs.

Do you want to manage your own email and website, do you need internal file sharing, ..... then you might want to have a look at Leopard Server and a XServe as well. On the other hand you can as well use a server running Linux. Really depends on your needs
 
I've run my business on Macs for 5 years now. We run pretty much everything office oriented via OpenOffice (free alternative to MSOffice, which is also available for OSX), Filemaker (database program), and Quickbooks. There are also a lot of other business oriented apps, many of which are open-source, freeware, or shareware; start here and look around...

Also, if you install classic, you can get PIMS classic for free (inventory tracking software, pretty decent for free).
 
PC to iMac has a learning curve

I just made an iMac purchase the first week of Oct., 2007. Finding invoicing software is the hardest if you sell products instead of service. I just downloaded “Invoicer” and am playing with the demo version (all features). It is the best I have tried so far out of over 30 invoice programs I have spend tons of hours trying.

One area I had problems with is my wireless network. My two PC's were running a DSL modem connected to a Linksys router using using 802.11b. They worked fine for several years. When I set up my iMac it would connect on a random basis. Calls to the apple store were useless. I had purchased the 3 year phone support program from apple (buy it if you switch!). Calling them caused several issues to come up. The short of it was a call to my phone company confirmed they were not providing me the proper speeds. This was fixed. Next I had to buy an 811.g DSL modem/router combo unit (ActionTec) from bestbuy. The iMac wants speed! Also you need to use 128 bit encryption, iMac doesn't like 64 bit. It took one week to just get up and running on the internet on a full time basis.

I use mozilla firefox and thunderbird on the pc’s so I downloaded them. They work differently on the iMac vs the PC, mostly for the good. There is no email client with the iMac unless you subscribe to .mac for a fee. The iMac browser, Safari really is good but so far I have not been able to find a way to selectively block popups by the site which I need to do. It seems in Safari popups are on or off, no in-between.

iWorks is a nice Mac program for a fair price ($89.00) but I am buying Microsoft Office (word, excel, publisher) to continue doing my work in. All iMac word processor programs I tried just garbled up .doc files from word when I imported them. Out of all the iMac word processing software I tried iMac so far seems the best deal for an apple only platform. Word will be my choice however.

Cut and paste, copy and paste etc. are menu selections,not mouse clicks on the iMac which to me is a time consuming area.

The dock on the iMac is a nice feature. The screen, I have a 20", is nice. I am not sorry I got it and look forward to making it my main computer to use in my business due to the many good to outstanding features. If you would like to ask specific questions contact me by email (lanley123@yahoo.com) and I will be glad to do what I can with answers.

luck

lanley
 
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