I made the switch from PC to MAC

Hello Everyone
For the past few weeks I have been visiting this forum for info on the MacBook Pro. Thanks for all the information! A week ago I called the nearest Apple store - an hour and a half away, and reserved the $1999 model, $1799 with my student discount. A week later, today, I called and my laptop had arrived. I took the trip down there and picked it up. I love it and I'm very happy with it. No problems so far! I bought the airport express for wireless internet for my laptop but I didn't realize at the time I bought it that my regular dell desktop is now not hooked up to the internet when i had to hook up the cable model to the airport connection. What can i do to solve that now that I already purchased the airport express? Thanks!
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.5)

If you want to have your Dell wired, and your laptop wireless, you can accomplish it with just a simple cable.
When you plug your internet into the base station in the WAN port you have another LAN port that outputs that connection. If you get a network cable (straight-through) you can connect it fron the LAN port on the base station to the internet port on your Dell.
I do not own this particular base station but I think this will work. The picture below will give you an idea of which port is which, even though it is probably shown on the base station.
But if you want to have both connected to wires at once then you will need a hub. You can buy any simple hub that you pick up from any local tech store, no need for anything fancy. You would plug the hub into the LAN port on the base station then you would plug the your Dell and your laptop into the hub. Both require network cables that have a Straight-through configuration. (should say it on the cable packaging.)
Hope this helps, good luck!
Awaiting my precious MBP.
Awaiting my precious MBP.
Awaiting my precious MBP.
Awaiting my precious MBP.

Similar Messages

Resources for Imac ---Just made the Switch from PC to Imac--

Hello everyone,
I just recently made the switch from windows to the intel based Imac apple... loving it..but things are a little overwhelming while trying to get adjusted to the differences.
So on that note.... Does anyone know of a good "cleaning program" for temp and junk files...
Preferably a free one and also can anyone suggest good and reliable apple/mac support web sites (aside from Apple.com) for downloads and tips/tricks
Thanks so much

Gi - and congrats on making the switch. Just to get you started
For cleaning up and general housekeeping (although you shouldn't need to use it often) there's OnyX:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx
This one's useful for keeping your apps up-to-date:
http://www.macupdate.com
and here's a few general interest that help you follow truths and rumours (lots!):
http://www.tuaw.com/
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.macstories.net/
http://www.9to5mac.com/
It shouldn't take you too long to get up to speed... enjoy

I am looking to make the switch from pc to mac and have been eyeing the MBP 13". I would like to know whether it is fine to add RAM and SSD myself? any compatibility or warranty problems? what brand/type of RAM and SSD is the best fit? thank you.

i am looking to make the switch from pc to mac and have been eyeing the MBP 13". I would like to know whether it is fine to add RAM and SSD myself? any compatibility or warranty problems? what brand/type of RAM and SSD is the best fit? thank you.

Chamar wrote:
I'm possibly wrong here but I suspect opening a brand new MBP to add parts yourself will void the warranty. It is probably in the small print. I certainly would not risk it for an expensive Apple product.
Some (Windows) laptops have easy access to memory and disk slots that do not necessitate taking the complete back cover off. However, Apple does not make life easy for you.
However, if you are going for a 'used' machine it is probably worth a try.
Not possibly, definitely wrong, Ram and Hard Drive are considered user replaceable and will not void the warranty if changed.

Debating the switch from PC to Mac?

Hello,
I am debating the switch from PC to Mac, but I currently use CS5 and Lightroom 5. Is it possible to do a Platform Swap? I would HATE to have to purchase CS6 (and Lightroom, if applicable) on top of a $2500 upgrade on a computer.. Help, please!
Kristi

Yes, you will need to cross upgrade to CS6 Mac for $200, but the Lightroom license is also for the Mac and you can activate using your present serial number.
Gene

I've Made the Switch (from iWeb) & Lived to Tell About It.

I've gotten a lot of help and useful information from this forum over the years and I will certainly miss it. I've just completed a 2 month transition where I've migrated my site from iWeb/Mobile Me to a new site made in RapidWeaver and hosted by Host Excellence. I figured I'd write a little (or a lot) about my experience, to give some others an idea of what they've got to look forward too. Hopefully it will arm you with some things to do and look out for. While I am describing RapidWeaver here, a lot of this process will be the same no matter what new software you use. I started off being pretty happy with what I had going in iWeb and not being thrilled at all about making the switch. Now I am so glad I made the switch and I am far happier about the new site than I was with the old one. BTW: the new sites address is: http://grillinsmokin.net . Feel free to visit. I think you'll quickly notice some things you simple can't do in iWeb. This isn't a knock against iWeb. I was very happy with iWeb and had no plans to switch. Where it hasn't been developed actively for four years now, it has been left behind somewhat.
To begin at the beginning: I've had a site made with iWeb since January of 2006 called Grillin' & Smokin' that combined my love of outdoor cooking and photography. Over the years it had grown rather large, with 375 photo entry pages and 230 blog pages. The Domain file was around 1.4 GB. This was not something I ever wanted to have to recreate from scratch. However losing MobileMe as a host was taking away Value Added features like the Hit Counter, Slide Show, Blog Comments, Blog Search etc. The handwriting is on the wall for iWeb too. I might have gone on using iWeb, but between losing key features and the fact iWeb was starting to show it's age, it was time for me to move on. Just before the iCloud announcement this Spring, I began researching website building software. I looked at their features, working methodology, themes, plug-ins and extensions. I download trial versions of the software where it was available as well as some of the themes or plugins I might be using. I gotta tell you, at first I was very frustrated and upset, because I was not finding anything that had the ease of use of iWeb and looked like it was going to be able to recreate the appearance of my original site. It appeared to be a series of compromises. I'd like the features of one package but I hated the themes available for that software. Another looked promising but isn't being upgraded regularly. My biggest frustration was some of the iWeb page types just don't exist in other packages. For example the Album Pages where multiple Photo Pages can be grouped and displayed, don't have a direct equivalent in any other package I saw. As part of my discovery process I read reviews of the various packages, including head to head comparisons of some of them. I also visited their discussion forums. After doing this for 3 weeks I "settled" on RapidWeaver. It was under active development; had a thriving developer community turning out a wide variety of add ons, plug-ins and themes; had an active user community & had lots of help resources available. The web pages it produced were standards compliant and you could get nice effects without resorting to Flash. I think the biggest selling point was all of the add-ons-kind of the same advantage the iPhone has with it's App Store.
Once I bought RapidWeaver & a 3rd Party theme, I tried the demo versions of some of the plug-ins and made sample versions of my page types from iWeb in RapidWeaver. I wanted to have a process in place, before I started mass production on the site. You really do need to do some of this homework in advance to avoid unpleasant surprises. The biggest minus I'd turned up about RapidWeaver (RW from this point on) is it didn't handle big sites well at all. The equivalent of the iWeb Domain file is the RapidWeaver Sandwich file or RWSW file. Once the RWSW file reaches 100MB or so you can get crashes or hangs uploading your site. Now 100 MB doesn't sound like much particularly when I was talking about a 1.4GB iWeb Domain File for my site, but RW doesn't include the photos in the RWSW file. Still I knew I was going to have to divide my site across several RWSW files. Initially the plan was to divide it into 3 sites: The main landing pages was one RWSW file and is the site reached by the url for the site. I was going to have a second RWSW file for my blogs and a third for my photos. Ultimately I ended up dividing the photos into 3 RWSW files. These extra files are hosted on sub-domians whose name goes in front of the main domain (http://sub-domain.main-domain.com). This meant some extra setup for me with my web-host, although they made the setup for the 4 sub-domains very easy and they were free. If you have a huge site and will need to split it, you'll want to check with your prospective web host if they charge extra for hosting additional sub-domains. For small iWebs sites this is not an issue-you have one RWSW file and one web address, just like you do now. My having sub-domains also meant more work linking files together across sites. RapidWeaver has something called an Offsite Page which helped with some of this, but having to split my sites up was the biggest PITA for me about the whole process. But knowing about this going in was better than finding out at the end when I tried to upload a single massive site. If you have a small site, the setup for uploading it is as straight forward as iWeb. RW has a built in FTP uploader or you can publish to file and use an FTP client like CyberDuck.
Once I had my site organization in place and had experimented with best practices for recreating each iWeb page type in RW, it was time to begin. I've gotta tell you when I started out I was not a happy camper. I liked the iWeb way of doing things about 70 percent of the time vs 30 percent for RW. At the end of the first week I told myself I have to move on and give up on the past. I was no longer going to be using iWeb and the sooner I embraced the RW way of doing things, the better off I'd be. At this early point it was still hard to see down the road to the end results. No matter what new package you buy, you should try to go with the flow and learn a new way of working. You'll be happier and less frustrated in the end. In my case after having gone through the entire process now, I've ended up changing my opinion. Now that I've gone through the entire process, I like the RapidWeaver way of doing things about 95 percent of the time and 5% for iWeb. That 5 percent is mostly the large site issue I've described. As I began working I was able to reuse much of the text from my iWeb blog in RW. I did have to paste it in as unformatted and reformat it in RW. My pictures were well organized in Aperture which also helped speed the process. One of the things I did is automate some of the tedious repetitious tasks. I created Quickeys macros to do things for me when ever possible. For example I could go to a particular photo page in iWeb and select the first caption. I would then trigger a macro that asked how many captions are on this page. It would then select the caption in iWeb, copy it, switch to RW and paste it in place and repeat XX times. If you know Quickeys or Applescript (I am guessing) there are plenty of opportunities to put it to good use.
RW present a different way of working than you are used to in iWeb and you'll just need to get used to it. What I am describing here would be true of any of the other packages I looked at too. First off it isn't WYSIWYG while you are editing. You are working with fairly basic looking text with few clues as to what the real page looks like. You switch to a preview mode to see what the page looks like in a browser. At first blush iWeb seems to win here. But what I soon realized is RW allows you to mix regular text and pictures together with html snippets right in the same text box. This makes adding counters or badges easy. Plus you can use HTML formatting for things like Titles occurring through your page. Instead of increasing the font size, making the text bold and changing its color, you can simply say this is Heading style 2 or 5 and this happens automatically per the predefined style. Better yet if you change a style everything on that one page or the entire site (your choice) inherits that change. So by working in a non-WYSIWYG mode you gain some long term. advantages over how iWeb works. The same is true with positioning. In iWeb it is fast and easy to place things on a page right down to the pixel. RW just doesn't give you that type of precision and next to splitting my site, layout was my biggest frustration with RW. At least to start. But there is a good reason for this "lack of precision" that may not be apparent until you view the site in a browser. When iWeb came out, you really didn't zoom your browser. iWeb uses Absolute Positioning where it uses anchored boxes for everything, whereas RW uses Relative Positioning. Objects with anchored text or picture boxes like iWeb start having problems if you zoom in or out more than one step. Text starts over flowing other text because the text boxes are anchored by one point. Pages just start looking scary if you try to zoom in or out too much. RW is looking at items relative positions and their relationships with one another. So initially you aren't placing the objects in the same way, it is more like eyeballing things in a way. But when viewed in a web browser you can zoom in or out to your heart's content. So what seems at first like a big disadvantage at first for RW, is actually a HUGE advantage.
This is why you need to go with the flow and try to embrace the new way of working. I mentioned earlier that I wasn't able to find a page type that was equivalent to the iWeb album page. I was able to use a very flexible plug-in for RW called stacks, which allows you to create various single and multi-column or multi-row layouts using empty stacks. You then populate the empty stacks with content, pictures text etc. These pages were not like iWeb albums where you nest the Photo Album Pages in the Album page and they create a skimmable preview and an automatic link to the album. Once I actually started making these new "Album" Pages in RW I realized I was gaining as much or more than I was loosing. The skimmable preview pictures was eyecandy I could live without. Nice touch, not essential. I never liked the way the preview picture shown on the Album page was the first photo in the Photo album. You couldn't change this. Now that I am placing my own photo on the Album page, I could use any picture and make it any size I wanted too. In iWeb the Album Caption was the name of the Photo Page. If this name was too long the caption didn't go to a second line, it got cut off. Any link in RW can have a description added to the link which is what you see in the yellow box when you hover your mouse over the item being linked. I used to hide text boxes links under the pictures on the Albums page for SEO and navigation help. So yes now I have to manually link the Album picture to the Photo Page, but I am no longer creating a hidden text box with a link that I have to remember to move when I add pages to the album. So once again my first impression was wrong. Advantage RW.
Another advantage to RW is any page type can have a sidebar. You can easily add favicons and site logos. You can easily add metadata to any page and customized the names of the path to your pages. The Themes can be more powerful and customizable too. About one week into the process I was begining to really go with the flow and see this new way of working had far more advantages for me than disadvantages.
By the time I finished my new RW site, my iWeb site was looking tired and dated. My biggest and most pleasant surprises were saved until the end. Any kind of SEO was a PITA with iWeb. You had to embed snippets on each page with a code from HaloScan or Google Analytics. Problem was, iWeb erased any such HTML code while you were uploading. So you then had to use a regular expression in the text box ("HaloScan goes here"), upload your site and replace the regular expression with the actual code using a 3rd party tool. Oh and don't do that on any blog page where you are using the built in Apple commenting system because the comments will disappear. I also had problems where the new comment badge would not show up for weeks or months after a comment was made. It was getting so the things I had to do AFTER I uploaded my site to MobileMe were taking longer than uploading the site. Once the site was recreated, it was time to add blog comments, a guestbook, a contact form, Google Analytics, and publish a site map. In my iWeb-influenced mind, I was saving the fussy PITA things for last. I was dead wrong. Unlike what you go through with iWeb, it couldn't have been been easier in RW:
-Blog Comments: Set up an account with the provider. Then I had to go into the page setup in RW for my blog page and click on a popup menu of comment providers & select Discus. If your provider isn't listed you paste some HTML code from the provider into a dialogue box provided by RW for the blog page. In my case it was simpler, just set Discus in the popup menu. Now instead of the iWeb badge showing me new posts (and only when it was in the mood), I now get an email.
-Google Analytics: Set up an account with Google. Go to the Stats area in the RW side bar, click on Configure, paste in your code from Google and you are good to go. You can monitor your Google analytics stats right from within RapidWeaver. (Also works this way for GoSquared Live Stats).
-Guestbook: Same as iWeb. You add a page with an HTML snippet from your Guestbook provider in an iFrame.
-Contact Form: This is a RW page type which masks your email address from the spambots by transferring the information to an invisible and inaccessible page within your site. This page then emails you the information.
-Full Site Search: This doesn't exist in iWeb. You can search your blogs right now, but this is one of the features you lose when MobileMe shuts down. By adding an inexpensive Plug in called RapidSearch Pro I enable full site search. You set up a MySQL server for your site. Host Excellence walked me through the 4-Step Process via a well written Help File. You then control what pages are indexed via your sitemap.xml file. You let RapidSearch Pro index your site and you are good to go.
-SiteMap: There is a simple SiteMap generation feature built into RW 5. There are third party tools for doing this for iWeb. I purchased an inexpensive RW plug in called SiteMap plus that not only generates the sitemap.xml file, it allows you to customize what pages get searched and at what frequency. This ties into what is searched via RapidSearch Pro. This plug-in also generates a visible and customizable sitemap page to help your site's users find their way around. Another bonus of being hosted off Mobile Me is when I went to add my sites to my Google account they had already been indexed. It seemed like they never crawled MobileMe unless you told them you wanted them to look at your site.
Link Checking: This doesn't exist in iWeb. I bought another inexpensive plug-in called Link Inspector for RW. It checks all of your internal and external links and generates a report showing the status of all links. This was just what the doctor ordered for my large site. I will run it periodically to make sure external links are still working and that I haven't broken any internal links.
My site was pretty much wrapped up on Monday August 8th. I just had to add in Blog Comments, Google Analytics, the Guestbook, Full Site Search and the Site Map. I figured I would go public on Tuesday or Wednesday. To my great pleasure these 5 items took all of 2 hours to get set up and working. This was a nice touch after 2 months of hard work.
So there you have it. This is the process I went through converting my site over to RapidWeaver. Your mileage may vary. I am not pushing RapidWeaver for everyone. You have to find what program is the right fit for you. You may find staying with iWeb on a new host is the right fit for you. You need to decide if you can live with the features you lose once you aren't hosted on Mobile Me. For me there was great pain, but in the end there was a lot of gain too. I do like my new site and I feel it will serve me well for years to come. Good luck to all of you in whatever path you choose. Lastly thanks one last time to the helpful folks around here
Jim
http://grillinsmokin.net
Message was edited by: Jim Mahoney

Thanks Roddy. I agree with your take on some of the other software you mentioned, at least from the perspective of having dabbled with demo versions of some of the others. I will add that with Sandvox I felt a little nervous about it. Kind of almost like the software was a "hobby" effort a la the first gen Apple TV.
I also agree with some of your points regarding RapidWeaver. But now that I've built my rather large (for a hobbyist site) website with it I will have to respectfully disagree about it being at the same level as iWeb, or as you put it: a sideways move. While iWeb can be made to do things it was never originally meant to do, there are many places it simply can't go that RapidWeaver can. I was often hitting the limits of what you could do in iWeb, whereas with RapidWeaver, with one exception, I didn't feel like I was running up against any limits yet. The exception is it's lack of ability to handle large sites well. That was almost the deal breaker for me. I find it unexplainable that a software package with all kinds of add-ons helping you make more ambitious sites, can't handle those same sites in a single file. This was almost a deal-breaker for me. For folks who have small to medium sized iWeb sites this isn't a concern. There are also ways to warehouse images on the server to keep file size down, but this gets more complex than many folks coming from iWeb would want to do. Me splitting my site up the way I did was more work than I wanted to do.I almost bagged the whole thing and was close to just taking the old site down.
Now if we were to fantasize for a minute I can think of a way where I could also say iWeb to RapiWeaver is a sideways move: While I don't think iWeb '09 is the equal to RapidWeaver 5, I'd bet that iWeb 11 or the oft rumored iWeb Pro might have been. I kept hoping that Apple would keep pushing the limits of what iWeb could do and add in some missing features and head down the HTML 5 road.
I will conditionally agree on your saying that the shopping list for RapidWeaver can be substantial. I will qualify that by saying: Depending on what you are doing with it, your shopping list for RapidWeaver can be substantial. With one exception, I do think the base package of RapidWeaver is fairly priced. I think the basic Stacks functionality and a few basic stacks should be part of RapidWeaver. The more esoteric stacks can be pay as you go. When iLife 11 was announced without a an update to iWeb, I did some preliminary pricing and I was rather discouraged at the total. This spring I got more serious about things and repriced RapidWeaver and add-ons. After trying out various themes and plug-ins, I was able to sharpen my pencil and reduce the cost of entry considerably. One of the things that helped is the theme I bought had a couple features built into it. It had a nice lightbox type slideshow for photo pages and animated banners/headers capabilities built in. This saved me the expense of several additional plug-ins. Also while I have a blog, I don't consider myself a blogger. I was able to use the built in blog page and I don't feel limited by it at all. Some of the other ad-ons I bought: such as the link checker, site wide search and a more sophisticated sitemap generator were items I added because I could tell I would want to keep the site going long term. Those 3 plug-ins did that a a low price. I didn't think they needed to be built in.
But everyone's mileage may vary. RapidWeaver or any other web design program isn't right for every iWeb user. It all depends on personal needs, abilities and budgets. I'm just glad I can get back to posting to the site and not recreating it.
Jim

I finally made the switch from a PC to the MAC

After years of ******* for one, my new Mac arrived yesterday. When I plugged my 3g Phone in, Itunes popped up a message essentially telling me it had to delete all of my music in order to setup a sync relationship with the phone. Is there anyway around this?

You need to transfer your music from the iPhone to your new Mac. You can only sync music from one library. You can choose cancel when you get the message that it is linked to another library or there are ways to prevent syncing.
You can open iTunes first and go to iTunes>Preferences>Devices and check the box "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods" and choose Ok. Then connect your iPod.
You can also use a keyboard command to prevent your iPhone auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on a Mac hold down the Option and Command (⌥ and ⌘ Apple) keys together. This will stop the phone from auto-syncing with iTunes and it will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure it has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 20 to 30 seconds depending on your computer: iTunes for Mac - Keyboard Shortcuts
If at any point you get a message that your phone is linked to another library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs it.
iTunes will only let you copy your purchases directly from an iPod to the computer, you'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
Purchased applications can also downloaded over again if they are lost, see this article for details: How to redownload purchased applications from the App Store
For everything else (music from CDs, other downloads and including iTunes purchases) there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod Touch or iPhone. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer data (such as playcounts and ratings), movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well.
A selection of iPod/iPhone to iTunes utilities:
Senuti Mac Only (iPod Touch & iPhone compatible)
SharePod Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPodRip Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
Music Rescue Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)

Trying to make the switch from PC to Mac

Hi, I just graduated from high school and I'm off to college so I've been doing some research on what kind of laptop to get. I'm heavily leaning towards the Mac but I'm looking for that extra nudge that makes me a believer after a life on PC. I tend to be pretty virus-prone so the fact that Mac doesn't really have a problem with that is a huge factor. I really like the style and aesthetics that Mac has and it's simplicity of use. I'm not so worried about making the switch in that aspect because I feel like Mac won't be a very complicated and overwhelming change from PC. I also like the deal that I would get a free iPod Touch upon purchase and a $100 cut in price (so I'm told by the man at the Apple store). I have been looking specifically at the Macbook Pro 13-inch. However, one thing that I hear a lot about is problems with compatibility. Apparently there are a good deal of programs that don't work well with Mac and I don't know which ones. I would like to know exactly what kind of programs these are. Will I be able to download music or movies on a Mac? run games like WoW (if I would ever decide to play it) or similar MMOs? If it's not too much to ask it would be nice if someone could point out what Macs can do that PCs can't or on the flip side what PCs can do that Macs can't - Pros and Cons are good too. I would really appreciate any help anyone could give me. Thank you.

Hi Tower_Sage,
I hope you realize that you are going to get an extremely Apple-biased viewpoint here . The choice between a Mac and PC is purely personal, and compatibility is generally not an issue. There are really only a few instances where compatibility becomes critical, and that is the requirements of your college, and games.
First, my favorite, games:
Most high-profile, big-budge titles eventually come out for Mac. Unfortunately sometimes the performance of the game suffers compared to the PC version. This is not because of some flaw or problem with Macs, but rather the amount of time and effort developers put on the game. EA uses a Direct X "wrapper" for many of its games, and this results in lower performance than on a comparable equipped PC. The few games I have played this way (Spore, C&C 3, NWN2) all played "good enough" on my Mac. Some developers (like PopCap and Blizzard) actually support Mac from the get-go, and these titles do not suffer at all. Another example that I just discovered today, PopCap and Blizzard have created a World of WarCraft themed Peggle game, however this is available for PC only (at least right now), so I can't play it on my Mac. Bottom-line, if games are a priority, you need to investigate if the games you want to play are on the Mac, otherwise you will need to run Boot Camp.
School Requirements:
My college specifically requires Microsoft Office 2003 (not earlier or newer versions like 2007) for coursework, and Internet Explorer. So, when I switched to a Mac (in early 2008) I faced a few hurdles. I am a "computer geek," and was able to work around the compatibility issues by using Safari, and Office 2004 (and later Office 2008) for about 98% of the issues. The biggest issues seems to be the individual professors and classmates, as if they are not able to open your Word or PowerPoint documents, then you of course can't get grade. However, the work-around for this, was to use the Save-As command and save the documents in the 2000/2003 format. If you remember to do this, you should be able to get by using the Mac versions of Office. One of my final courses, I absolutely had to have Internet Explorer due to some glitch on the school servers, as I was unable to turn in assignments using Safari. Make sure you check with your college and see what requirements they have.
The only other "real" issue you will have, is software. Mac software is not sold everywhere, so you will end-up getting most of it online, unless you happen to live near an Apple Store (best place for Mac products, as far as selection goes). The advantage of getting software online, is that there is a lot of open source software that can be found for free.
Lastly, your copy of Office 2007 will not run on your Mac, without using Boot Camp. Under Boot Camp, your Mac becomes a PC. This means you must have a Windows disc (with license) to use Boot Camp, and this forces you to share your Mac hard drive with two operating system. Unless your college supports Macs (many do), plan on getting a copy of Windows at around $150 along with your Mac. Depending on the monetary support you have, you may want to consider getting a copy of VMWare Fusion (http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/) or Parallels Desktop for Mac (http://www.parallels.com/) for around $80 as well. This program will allow you to run Windows in a window on your Mac Desktop, and integrate Windows only program into the Mac experience. Plus, if you use Boot Camp, these programs can actually use that Windows install, allowing you to run in a window on your desktop, and if you need max performance (like for a game), you can re-boot into Boot Camp. This is how I currently run (with Parallels Workstation), and it solves 100% of the possible compatibility issues.
Good luck!
Rich S.
Coming Soon: Wombat Computer Service (http://www.wombatcs.com)

Making the switch from PC to Mac.

I am a dedicated Apple fan, to say the least. Like, I need a t-shirt and a tattoo. I have an iPod and iPhone currently and I've played a bit with the iPad but that's not what I'm asking.
My whole life I've had a PC. I hate Windows and PCs have always seem to fail me. I'm an extremely heavy computer user.
In school, I use Macs. I'm in Graphic Design. I also am a musician. I've been begging for one for a super long time. Now that I'm getting ready for college - a Mac could very well be my Christmas present.
In the past five years I've went through quite a few laptops due to Windows failing and what not, just dumb things that could happen I suppose. Being an Apple lover, I've heard that Macs are very could quality laptops, it's harder for them to get viruses, ect. Is it true?
Would it be worth it to make the switch?
What tips can you give?
& what antivirus software should be used for a Mac?
Previously, I used Norton and I haven't had too good of an experience.

Whereas no Windows computer would last very long without products like Norton, a Mac already includes all the protection it needs against viruses and malware. Norton a/k/a Symantec functions well on Windows PCs but it will cause no end of problems on a Mac.
A Mac is far removed from a Windows PC. It has always been so. Evolution of the two systems has been completely separate from the beginning, and have followed very different philosophies. Whereas OS X draws its roots from mainframe OS with multiple user accounts that must be separated from one another and the system that runs them, Windows took a very open approach from the beginning. It got much worse with Explorer and Active Destkop. Microsoft has been trying to shut the door on that Pandora's box of viruses and malware ever since.
Norton and its many Mac variants are one of the worst pieces of trash you can install on a Mac. All commercial Mac anti-virus software is superfluous and some of it is harmful. Apple Support Communities is full of horror stories describing the effects of installing such junk.
OS X already includes everything it needs to protect itself from viruses and malware. You don't need to buy anything else.
This is an interesting thread you might enjoy: Virus count?

I'm looking to make the switch from PC to Mac to accommodate Premiere Pro CC.

Premeire Pro is a big program that needs a lot of power to function correctly. I have the "System Requirements" page up from the Adobe website, but as I'm researching laptops, it's still not clear to me which Macbooks will be compatible with that program. Can anyone help me with this dilemma?

Tess,
I'm not sure why one would switch to Mac for PrPro these days. Once upon a time Apple was clearly a better line of gear for imaging/video, especially as their stuff was more clearly specialized to that work. Over the last couple years it's almost seemed like Apple was tossing their whole concept of "we're the graphics folks" out the window. Look at the massive threads on these boards over the last few OS updates for Mac ... expensive two-year old graphics cards suddenly no longer supported, graphics drivers choking on the system, people needing to go back an OS notch or two to get back to work ... and the hardware is no longer any better designed for graphics than the PC side with similar attention to graphics needs. This isn't to say that Apple doesn't produce some fine machines that do work well for this stuff.
So out of curiousity ... what do you think would be the big improvement in going to Mac for the OS? There's been a post recently where one of the big all-time hardware geeks around these parts posted a laptop over at Newegg for about a grand that would be a pretty good editing machine. Pc ...
Neil

THinking about the switch from PC to Mac Pro

I'm looking at a configuration of two 2.8 quad-core with 2 gb ram from Apple, 6 gb ram from 3rd party, a single 750 SATA drive and Final Cut 2 Studio, and running VMWare Fusion for running Windows apps, and software development tools (Windows world). I have been doing a fair amount of video editing/processing, and see that growing - between this increase, and Windows Vista, I think the Mac world may be my best choice - I would run the Windows apps under Windows XP.
The Apple Store recommended going with 2 x ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB cards - I will be running with dual monitors, and the biggest demand will come from Final Cut 2. Is there a better choice to be made for the money?
Anybody see any flags raised by what I say I want to do, and the hardware I'm thinking about?
I debated the value in the second Quad core - whether the Final Cut 2 Studio software was written to take adavantage of multiple cores. I'm leaning toward the second quad core since the studio is most likely separate apps, and there might be some benefit provided the second quad core via the OS. Any thoughts on this?
The Ram and hard drives are too pricey from Apple - any suggestions on good third party supplier for the ram chips - I know they need to meet the Apple specs, but assume some mfgs have had a better production/quality history than others.
Any input on this is appreaciated.
Michael

Hatter,
The configuration is close - I like both of your suggestions on the graphics card and the boot drive - Apple won't add the Radeon 3870 card, nor the Velocity Raptor drive. So, if I buy the 3870 and Velocity Raptor from OWC, there is a decision I would have to make with regard to what I buy from Apple.
I'd like to continue the process, listing my thoughts, hoping to get more good feedback.
I'm leaning towards buying Apple's standard graphics card (Radeon 2600), and use it for lower demand activities - I figure I can always upgrade it at a later date if the performance is frustrating - I'll have a good comparison with the 3870, so the contrast should be apparent. I'm thinking about the standard 320 g drive, since the extra cost ($50 for 500g, or $150 for 750g) doesn't make sense with the Caviar Black priced at ~$150.
So, I would be getting a machine with the OS sitting on the 320g drive. *Is there a good strategy for adding the Velocity Raptor, making it my boot drive?*
I'm assuming I will get the OS on disc - is this true?
Lastly, I'm looking at the timing of purchasing. I debated on waiting to buy until after MacWorld 2009, but plan on buying prior to the event. My thought was to avoid any issues that come with new releases - adding another layer of issues without knowing what is "normal behavior" isn't worth the increased functionality. In the PC world, sales abound at the end of quarter, and prior to new release. *Is it worth waiting a little while hoping Apple will discount the Mac Pro? Or is this unlikely??*
Again, thanks for all of the great suggestions.
Michael

Made the switch from Windows with a new iMac now my iPhone won't sync with erasing

Hello!
        I migrated from an older PC to a new iMac and when I try to sync my iPhone (which was synced on the old PC ) it wants to erase all my iPhones (3GS) data in favor of what currently on the iMac's/iTunes.
        I deauturized my iTunes account on the old PC before switching, was there something else I may have missed?
        I'd like to be able to import all the app and music tht's currently on my iPhone into my new iMac/iTunes.
        Is there a way to acheive this?
        BTW I LOVE MY IMAC!!!!!!!!!!!!
        Thanks in advance for any comments/advise...........
        D.

If you transfer your iTunes library from your PC to your Mac following the instructions included with this link, no iTunes content on your iPhone will be erased with the first sync with iTunes on your Mac.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

HT204392 Just Made the switch from PC to a 27" iMac. USB Ports full !

After adding my iPhone charger, my Printer, a superdrive and the Bose Companion 5 speakers, my USB ports are full! Any good HUBs out there or other connection solutions? Not sure what the Thunderbolt connections are for, except additional monitors? Is it possible to adapt those to USB 3.0?
I've been considering the Logitech Keyboard to pick up the numeric keypad but it requires a USB port as does my DSLR. Right now I remove the SD card from the camera, but firmware updates are a pain since I have to reach around the back of the iMac and choose one of the cables to temporarily remove. Not sure what others are doing to silve this problem and I know hubs can be buggy...

There are also USB hubs that will connect to the Thunderbolt port.
This one Thunderbolt™ Express Dock for Mac from Belkin also has a FireWire Port. There are less expensive ones out there search for thunderbolt usb hub

Making the switch from PC to Mac what's my best option?

I am at the stage where I need to upgrade my notebook. I am looking at a Mac because of all the multi-media capabilities that come with Mac, but I will still need to function in the MS world. Any comments on running MS Office on a Mac? Can I run both the Apple software & the MS software on the Mac at the same time? I need some help to decide what to do.
Dell Inspiron 8200 Windows XP Pro

I am by no means a Mac head that will recommend a Mac in any circumstance, regardless of the facts. However, I think devbob's comments are biased and he has never used a Mac.
I own both a Mac and a Windows computer and I consider myself above average when it comes to computer knowledge, so I thought I would add my 2 cents. The Mac is, hands down, is easier to use and requires much less maintenance. And the Mac interacts very will with Windows for the basic stuff like email, internet, Word, and Excel. If you need to do anything else with other Windows users regularly, a Mac is probably not for you. Outside of those items, it can get very difficult to work across platforms and it would be much better to use the same opporating system your peers are using. In most cases, that is Windows.
devbob is certainly correct that there is more software for windows than for Mac. But there are also more viruses and spyware for Windows. For home use, I don't think there is a better computer than a Mac. However, I don't think I will ever use a Mac at work because, like devbob said, there isn't enough software out there for the Mac. Also, since only 3% of the world uses a Mac currently, there isn't much incentive for outside vendors to write for a Mac yet. Although, there isn't much incentive for people to write viruses for it yet.
If you are planning to use a lot of Windows programs at work, don't get a Mac. If you are doing a lot of multimedia, email, and internet surfing and only need very occasional access to Windows software, I think getting a Mac would be a good choice.
Oh, and one more thing. I don't currently have an Intel Mac, but if you do want to run Windows with bootcamp or Parallel, I am pretty sure that you will need to buy you're own copy of Windows XP and you'll also probably want to buy virus protection. That could set you back another $400. You could almost buy a cheap laptop for that.
iMac (Flat Panel 21) G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)
iMac (Flat Panel 21) G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Should I make the switch from PC to Mac?

Hi. I have recently bought a 120GB HD Sony Laptop (PC) and am wondering if you would recomend I take it back for a MA699LL/A Macbook that has 60GB HD.
Does anyone own that model? And is it pretty fast?
And if this is in the wrong forum, sorry, I am new to the Apple forums.
Thanks. =)

More than fast enough for web browsing, word processing, etc. In fact, it's overkill for simple tasks like these.
As with most laptops, it doesn't make a great gaming machine - the graphics card is not really intended for heavy 3D. If you were wanting to install Windows on it as well, you probably want a bigger hard drive, but there are other options - if you only need to run a few Windows programs, Parallels works very well. Parallels is a virtual machine, meaning that it can run Windows or Linux on top of OS X, at near native speeds.
I bought my Mac Pro intending to dual boot to Windows, but haven't had to resort to that - Parallels does the job nicely. In fact, it's fast enough to do heavy .NET or Delphi development with no noticeable lag.
Once you become used to OS X, you won't want to run Windows.

Need help...just made the switch from treo

Some things i would like to know if Blackberry Curve can perform.....
Is there a setting that will make the LCD screen light up when I receive email and text notifications instead of me having to hit a button>
Is there a setting to allow a text message to auto display instead of having to "find" it?
Is there a way to organize my messages instead of having all texts, phone calls, and email messages all in one gigantic list?
thanks )
Solved!
Go to Solution.

1. Nope.
2. What do you mean "find it". My text messages appear (newest first) at the top of the SMS folder. One click on the homescreen and I see them.
3. Yes, go to Messsages > Options > General Settings > scroll down to Email and SMS Inboxes = Separate.
If you want the phone calls NOT to log in your messages folder, press the green dial key > Options > Call Logging and check NONE or your desire in that list and save.
Good luck.
1. If any post helps you please click the below the post(s) that helped you.
2. Please resolve your thread by marking the post "Solution?" which solved it for you!
3. Install free BlackBerry Protect today for backups of contacts and data.
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I made the switch from PC to MAC

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