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Switching from PC

S

Sonoran

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 29, 2007
64
0
I am new to this forum & Macs. Just thought I would check in.

With all the stuff going on with Vista I am seriously considering a switch to Mac. I have a lot of reading to do & this site/forum looks like a good one.

I am a web developer primarily working in Adobe Dreamweaver, Fireworks & PhotoShop. I need a good solid business machine & my main concern is find applications for the Mac that will be a good/better substitute for what I run on my PC.

I look forward to reading this forum & all your help.
 
Adobe has just released their software as Universal Binary, so you should not feel any apparent performance difference between a similar specified PC and Mac.

And welcome to the boards, hope you get all your questions answered and all the help you need.

Oh, and welcome to :apple: :D
 
I am expecting my CS3 upgrade versions for DW, FW and PS any day now.

When I ordered the software from Adobe I asked about switching to the Mac platform & his reply startled me.

If I have the current versions of the software & I want to switch to the Mac Adobe will ship full versions on the Mac platform for the shipping charges only. That's pretty impressive.

I still need a Word, Excel & Outlook alternative (or get the MS Office Mac version) as well as QuickBooks Pro.

Ahhh... the joys of researching a new 'toy'.
 
NeoOffice is a fine, free alternative to MS Office. If you're hitched to Outlook and want a unified interface to your tasks, events/appointment calendar, and e-mail, there's no real substitute for Entourage, so you'll be wanting MS Office anyway. Depending on how heavily you rely on all those apps, you might not need it. You might consider giving Mail.app (Apple Mail, will come pre-installed) and iCal (will come pre-installed) a try. If you like how they work separately but want to tie them together under an umbrella interface, you might consider an app like Crm4Mac.

I don't know of any real alternative to QuickBooks Pro. The reports I've read have users installing Parallels Desktop and/or BootCamp so they can continue to use some of their Windows apps, especially those that have no comparable Mac counterpart. You'll be hard-pressed to find a Mac personal finance app that can feature- or interface-match Quicken/Win or MS Money/Win, tho' there are a few contenders that are evolving at a pleasantly rapid pace.

Hope that helps.
 
Sonoran said:
I am expecting my CS3 upgrade versions for DW, FW and PS any day now.

When I ordered the software from Adobe I asked about switching to the Mac platform & his reply startled me.

If I have the current versions of the software & I want to switch to the Mac Adobe will ship full versions on the Mac platform for the shipping charges only. That's pretty impressive.

I still need a Word, Excel & Outlook alternative (or get the MS Office Mac version) as well as QuickBooks Pro.

Ahhh... the joys of researching a new 'toy'.
Click to expand...

Microsoft Office Mac Edition 2008 should be coming out this summer. The 2004 edition is native for PowerPC-based Macs and is emulated on today's Intel-based Macs, so it is not as fast, but the 2008 edition will be native to both, so it will be faster.

And, there's always the less expensive iWork, which can create and read Office files. A new edition usually comes out in January at Macworld, but it didn't this year. Whether we have to wait until next January for a new version or if they'll release a new one later this year is beyond me.
 
well, if u are not in a hurry, u can wait for a couple of months(1~??), photoshop CS3 is now UB version and it runs just as fast as on windows (many ppl did comparison, some of them show mac is faster, others show the opposite, but I think the difference should be negligible), but others, such as DW, is still not optimized for intel chip, and ppc version DW runs extremely slow on intel chip mac, even with my 2G memory.
 
cepler said:
Morons didn't release UBs for CS2 though... *sigh*
Click to expand...

Why morons? They were already working on CS3 and updating applications like Photoshop to UB is no simple task and would not have come in a free update either.


Evo
 
slooksterPSV said:
Thunderbird w/Calander extension, dunno what its called, is a lot like Entourage

EDIT: Lightning that's what it's call
Click to expand...

Or you could just use Mail and iCal.


OP: If you're going to be getting a Macbook Pro, wait until the Santa Rosa update, which should be in June. Since you do a lot of graphic design and stuff, you could really benefit by having the more RAM that the 64-bit Santa Rosa platform brings.
 
zioxide said:
Or you could just use Mail and iCal.


OP: If you're going to be getting a Macbook Pro, wait until the Santa Rosa update, which should be in June. Since you do a lot of graphic design and stuff, you could really benefit by having the more RAM that the 64-bit Santa Rosa platform brings.
Click to expand...

I think
1. C2D already has 64 bit?
2. adobe, for now, has no plan to make their products 64bit.
 
clevin said:
I think
1. C2D already has 64 bit?
2. adobe, for now, has no plan to make their products 64bit.
Click to expand...

The processor is, but the chipset isn't. Therefore, you're limited to ~3.3GB of ram.

The 64-bit chipset will allow at least 4GB of ram, probably maxing out at 8GB.

Even though an individual app might not be 64-bit, having 4GB+ of ram will allow for more apps to be run simultaneously.
 
I got a mac, discovered I can't do web design on it (I don't know why, I just can't..) installed XP, and it's fine. more stable too. Don't ask how, but somehow XP under parallels is more stable and better battery life then just XP!
 
iMacZealot said:
Microsoft Office Mac Edition 2008 should be coming out this summer. The 2004 edition is native for PowerPC-based Macs and is emulated on today's Intel-based Macs, so it is not as fast, but the 2008 edition will be native to both, so it will be faster.

And, there's always the less expensive iWork, which can create and read Office files. A new edition usually comes out in January at Macworld, but it didn't this year. Whether we have to wait until next January for a new version or if they'll release a new one later this year is beyond me.
Click to expand...

come now..this is word we're talking about..not photoshop. How fast does word need to run? Microsoft word runs fine on G3s. The only downside of running things like that on rosetta is that they eat up about 4x as much ram as the native apps. Just get plenty of ram and your fine.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I got a mac, discovered I can't do web design on it (I don't know why, I just can't..) installed XP, and it's fine. more stable too. Don't ask how, but somehow XP under parallels is more stable and better battery life then just XP!
Click to expand...

What do you mean you can't? Haven't gotten used to the work flow, or the tools don't suit you?
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I got a mac, discovered I can't do web design on it (I don't know why, I just can't..) installed XP, and it's fine. more stable too. Don't ask how, but somehow XP under parallels is more stable and better battery life then just XP!
Click to expand...

wait..your using just parallels with xp and not osx...but your not using bootcamp?
 
I've made my living for years off of a Mac with Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Can't wait for CS3 to arrive today via UPS!

I've just started using NeoOffice (free) instead of MS Office, and so far it's great. If you just need to use the occasional simple Word doc, a Mac can do that right out of the box with TextEdit (Mac's answer to Notepad).

And once you get used to thing like Exposé you'll wonder how you ever did work without the productivity enhancements of OS X.
 
Thanks to all for your responses.

After looking at the Neooffice website I just might try it. The one app I will have to get from Bill is Outlook. I really do rely on my Treo 650 (Palm OS) and being able to synch with Outlook.

Most of my Word files are simple proposals, contracts & misc. 'stuff'. Same for Excel. Mostly personal things. Neooffice should work fine.

What about a database? Is there a simple DB program out there for the Mac? I keep a few simple databases in Access which I am sure I can export as a CSV file & bring into some other program to print lists &mailing labels.
 
Sonoran said:
Thanks to all for your responses.

After looking at the Neooffice website I just might try it. The one app I will have to get from Bill is Outlook. I really do rely on my Treo 650 (Palm OS) and being able to synch with Outlook.

Most of my Word files are simple proposals, contracts & misc. 'stuff'. Same for Excel. Mostly personal things. Neooffice should work fine.

What about a database? Is there a simple DB program out there for the Mac? I keep a few simple databases in Access which I am sure I can export as a CSV file & bring into some other program to print lists &mailing labels.
Click to expand...

Regarding syncing with outlook, I have a Treo 600, and it syncs perfectly with Apple's own iCal. You might give it a try, especially since Outlook isn't really available on the Mac, only Entourage.
 
Sonoran said:
…What about a database? Is there a simple DB program out there for the Mac? I keep a few simple databases in Access which I am sure I can export as a CSV file & bring into some other program to print lists &mailing labels.
Click to expand...

There's one in Neo Office.
 
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