Difficulty of a new user in getting used to Mac

Question

This is my first Mac, switching over from Windows. I have difficulty in getting adjusted to Mac. Admittedly I am a working adult who uses Windows at Office and hence have only an hour or so in the evening to get familiar with Mac.
Firstly, I have to transfer my files over to Mac. There is a compatibility matter, starting with the file format in my external hard disk: NTSC vs OS.
I have been unsuccesful in importing my emails from Outlook Express 3 to Eudora or iMail.
Then I have to install, or search, for softwares that are OS compatible for my Palm, Motorola mobile phone and Canon Pixma printer.
When installing the OS version for the printer, the Mac hung! This was only less than a week after I bought the Mac and I was very disappointed at that time. Only after repeated attempts at rebooting did the Mac finally restarted.
Then I started importing digital potos from my Nikon camera. I was familiar with editing and cropping the photos using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. I now find difficulty to do editing using iPhoto. (I can't even find the command to change the photo from landscape to portrait!) I know this may be just a matter of time but it can be very taxing and frustruating at the start.
I am having a bit of regrets and am starting to think if I should buy another Windows notebook as a second notebook (which will make this Mac a bit of a while elephant), or trade in this 3 weeks-old Mac.
I am sure there are many who have gone through this experience. Is it worth hanging in there? Is there a Windows Anonymous (just like Alcoholic Anonymous) group out there that provides help and emotional support for users weaning away from Windows to Mac?
MacBook Pro2,1   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

it can be hard to rewire your reflexes when a different OS is already second nature to you. maybe you did make the wrong choice for you personally in getting a mac, if you really never had a problem with the windows world and could do everything you needed to do. but I will say that most people that try using a different platform machine to the one they're used to usually remain quite frustrated for quite some time at the start, and that's where the 'macs are just rubbish' or 'windows is just a mess and illogical' knee-jerk reaction you often hear comes from. it happens to me all the time when I have been in situations where I need to work on an XP machine, it just annoys me because it's not what I'm used to.
one thing is for sure though.. the mac OS and mac apps are certainly more consistent and well-designed from a user perspective than XP or even vista. so once you start learning the fundamentals of the mac, you are more rewarded as you go along because everything you learn builds on the same techniques and ideas in a far more structured way than in the windows world.
by then, you'll probably also start appreciating the attention to detail and functional elegance of OSX. a lot of people blindly talk about the mac as being a whole lot of pretty eye-candy, but that it doesn't do anything special that you can't do in windows. well, let me give you a small example of how this isn't the case:
exposé in mac OSX is the system used for allowing you to manage your access to the windows you have open on your desktop. by hitting a key, you get to see at a glance every single open window, and quickly locate the one you need up front. it also let's you move everything out of the way at the touch of one button, to give you clean access to the desktop.
windows vista has added a feature with a similar idea. it allows you to stack all of your windows into a visually impressive 3D stack, and scroll through them (I think by using the scrollwheel on your mouse) to find the one you're looking for.
now, a lot of windows people criticise exposé as being yet another example of pretty mac eye-candy, the way it zooms your windows in and out in realtime and let's you see them in miniature, even with videos continuing to play live if any are open. but.. the thing about the mac approach, is that by using a visual means to implement this feature, it makes use of it by _adding functionality_. by the way exposé works, you can actually see what you are looking for instantly, and dive into it right away. but the vista equivalent of this feature doesn't actually give you any more functionality _at all_ than what you already had with alt-tab. you can't see what window you want because they're all stacked on top of each other, even though they may look pretty and high-tech in that 3D card stack. but all it is, is a fancied-up implementation of the very same function you already had, with a 3D visual design that doesn't help you in any way except to look impressive. this is the very definition of eye-candy!
it's this sort of thing that you start appreciating more and more as you get to know macs. the fact that there is a difference between good design being implemented thoughtfully and logically, and just spruced-up colourful interfaces that may look modern, but don't actually contribute to making your workflow better.
personally I believe it's worth the effort to push through and learn how to use the mac you bought. the rewards are there, you just have to take the time to get your head around it.