Switching from PC to Mac, some questions.

[caspersoong]

I have been a longtime PC user, and finally will be switching! Forgive me if this is the wrong place to post, as this is unknown territory for me. But I have a few questions to which I have not been able to find an answer to before switching.

1. Is Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 100% perfect, without any distortions when opening a file saved from a Windows PC?
2. How much distortion is possible if opening a Office file on iWork?
3. Is the built-in antivirus or whatever in Mac OS good enough to detect any viruses for Mac? How good is it? 100% detection or less?
4. Since Mac OS interprets 1 GB differently than Windows, is there a discrepancy when I download something, say reported 4.2 GB online but after downloaded reported as 4.x GB?
5. Is it true that HFS+ is more efficient in storage than NTFS and therefore can store more data than NTFS on the same sized drive? Heard it from the local Apple Authorised Reseller guys but no evidence online.
6. How efficient in storage is Time Machine? Does it make an extra copy of a movie every time I watch it? What about plays in iTunes? Does it make an extra copy of each song every time the number of plays increases?, etc.
7. Will I be able to use all my backups of my iPod touch as usual after the switch if I copy them from the PC to the Mac?
8. Will I be able to boot tethered from my Mac after jailbreaking on the PC with redsn0w?
9. Will the hard drive being 87 % full slow it down?
10. How much usable space (in both Windows and Mac terms) is there on the 500 GB MacBook Pro refresh minus iLife, Mac OS Lion, etc.?
11. If I want a 80 GB (according to Windows calculation of 1 GB) Boot Camp partition, I need to make an 85.6 GB partition from the Mac Boot Camp Assistant right?

Thanks!

 

[miles01110]

1. No version of Office is 100% perfect with any other version of Office.
2. 100% distortion is possible, however unlikely with iWork.
3. There is no built-in antivirus software with OS X.
4. Hardly matters. You have plenty of space on your hard drive.
5. See #4.
6. It is very efficient, but if you're worried about efficiency you won't be using TM anyways.
7/8 I don't know.
9. No.
10. 400ish GB.
11. Why worry about pointless things like storage? Storage is cheap.

 

[42streetsdown]

1. MS Office for Mac works like MS Office for Windows.

2. Pages is pretty good at opening .doc and .docx files. If the file has weird symbols and stuff it doesn't do to best job. I've found that it works as well as Google docs does. So pretty good.

3. There is this thing called Xprotect that detects known malware. the list is small. It's not really an antivirus though. Not like PC antivirus software. Since OS X is Unix-based you won't get any Windows viruses. There aren't any viruses in the wild that would attack your Mac. There are a few trojans, but i haven't seen them around much.

4. I'm not sure what this is about. OS X uses a different file system called HFS+ vs Windows' FAT32 or NTFS. I don't know if that's the reason or if they just report file sizes differently. It shouldn't be a problem.

5. No clue

6. Time Machine works alright. It doesn't make a backup every time you open a file. That'd be silly. It backs up when you save something new, or make changes to things.

7. If you transfer the entire iTunes folder it should work i'd think, but i've never tried it.

8. I've never messed with anything, but untethered JBs so i don't know. there is a native redsnow app so i should think so...

9. No

10. A basic OS X install is only like 6 GB.

 

[r0k]

1 & 2. I use Libre Office and iWork. They do everything I need.

3. There are no viruses to worry about but somebody will gladly sell you an antivirus for Mac. It will detect Windows viruses in your email to help prevent you from passing them along. To me this is useless as any good spam filter gets rid if them in the first place. Don't buy anything from Norton or McCaffee for your Mac.

4. This is something you can safely ignore. Who cares what is "reported" if the file is all there and it's not corrupted?

5. HFS+ has been around a very long time. It isn't the best file system Apple could have chosen but in my years of using it, I've never lost data do to power failure or other incidents that could lead to data loss on a truly ancient filesystem like FAT32.

6. Time Machine will not create "extra" copies of things but also keep in mind TM should never be your only backup.

7. I don't think so. Why would you bother with iPod Touch backups in the first place? Back up to iCloud.

8. Don't know about j/b'ing. I don't bother with it.

9. No. I have had Macs fill up completely and the only way I found out the drive was full was when I tried to save a large file. I have a G4 mini with only a couple hundred meg free right now. It's so full it can't even run software update. I've gotta find time to put a new HDD in that thing.

10. You are probably looking at 450 Gig free. OS X got smaller with Snow Leopard and smaller again with Lion. I remember getting 15 gig back on machines when I installed SL over Leopard. I wouldn't be worrying about HDD space on a new machine unless you plan to keep hundreds of gig of movies, pictures and music on the thing. For those items, I prefer an external 1TB HDD.

11. I have win 8 running in virtual box without any partition whatsoever. The whole thing runs out of a 15 GB disk image I can delete or move at any time. I prefer not to deal with a windows partition on my Mac. A modest amount of windows software will run directly in OS X under Crossover so again you aren't dealing with booting anything.

Stop hyperventilating and get a Mac. I must warn you that you'll be angry. You'll be angry you waited so long.

 

[waynep]

I switched from PC to Mac in January. No regrets at all.

#1 & 2. I have MC Office on my Mac and Pages. But I don't have Numbers or Keynote yet. I have found no problems opening office docs in Pages but I don't do any fancy formatting. Mine are all pretty basic. I find I am using Pages more and more for personal docs since it's easy to use. But I'll keep Office around for work docs since my company uses Office and I sometimes work on work related docs on my Mac.

#3. I don't run av constantly. I do have ClamAV for an occasional scan. There are no viruses for the Mac, just some Trojan Horses which are easy to avoid by not clicking on links in emails etc.

#4. Really . . A GB is a GB the world over. 1024x1024 bytes. Beside if it display 1000x1000, the difference is small given today's hard drive sizes.

#5. Never heard anything like this. I have heard it does not need defragmenting. Something heard from local reseller might be simply sales talk for people hat don't know better.

#6. I use TM and it works fine. The play counts are kept in separate files than the mp3's themselves. It manages things itself. I don't try to over-manage it. I consider it hands-off and treat it such. I think some people over-manage some things.

#7. Not sure. I would just use iTunes and not over manage it.

#8. I don't know about this.

#9. Not sure. Have not heard about this.

#10. When I bought mine MBP with a 500GB drive. It had a bout 450GB free. That was minus iLife. I installed it afterwards.

#11. I run Win 7 using VirtualBox. It works and no need for a boot camp partition. VB is also free. I don't use Windows enough to need to boot it. When I bought my MBP, I decided to jump in with both feet and not depend on Windows. But there are two apps that I need that I have not found replacements for yet for the Mac.

 

[mrgraff]

Stop hyperventilating and get a Mac. I must warn you that you'll be angry. You'll be angry you waited so long.

So very true

Also, for the first few days, maybe even a week or two, you will probably notice that some of your favorite Windows features are "missing." You will even be tempted to return here and complain about how badly designed your Mac is. But don't do it. Don't try to make your Mac a PC.

11. Like others have said, try virtualizing it. I'm running Windows XP in VirtualBox. The virtual copy has more RAM than my old real PC and the Mac has more than twice that still available when the two are running at the same time. There may be advantages to Bootcamp, but I haven't found one yet.

 

[WSR]

...
#4. Really . . A GB is a GB the world over. 1024x1024 bytes. Beside if it display 1000x1000, the difference is small given today's hard drive sizes.
...

I assume you meant to say "1024x1024x1024 bytes".
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes = 1024x1024 bytes
1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes = 1024x1024x1024 bytes.

 

[waynep]

I assume you meant to say "1024x1024x1024 bytes".
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes = 1024x1024 bytes
1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes = 1024x1024x1024 bytes.

Yes you are very correct . . .