switch to Mac?

ScottyKM

ScottyKM

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so Im thinking off switching, l
eopard looks a hell of a lot better than vista, will be getting shot of a desktop and laptop and getting the 24 in Imac and a 13 in macbook for the wife.

anyone forsee any major pitfalls? or made the switch and wishes thay hadnt?

my main use is for photoshop/ lightroom and email/net,
the wifes main use is watching silly videos and playing those 'coffee break' style games, and I'll use the macbook for location work and going on tour for DVDs etc.

can i still play divx movies etc?
whats the learning curve like after 10 years of windoze?

thanks in advance guys:beer:
 
scottykm said:
so Im thinking off switching, l
eopard looks a hell of a lot better than vista, will be getting shot of a desktop and laptop and getting the 24 in Imac and a 13 in macbook for the wife.

anyone forsee any major pitfalls? or made the switch and wishes thay hadnt?

my main use is for photoshop/ lightroom and email/net,
the wifes main use is watching silly videos and playing those 'coffee break' style games, and I'll use the macbook for location work and going on tour for DVDs etc.

can i still play divx movies etc?
whats the learning curve like after 10 years of windoze?

thanks in advance guys:beer:
Click to expand...

I've had my iMac for about three months now and I love, it has a better look and feel that anything on windows. I generally find it quite intuitive to use but saying that worries me because I suspect it highlights the fact that there is actually quite a lot of time needed for me to really learn it well....I think the system just works well....windows seems to do a lot of faffing about....so the summary....I've bought a Mac, I love it but clearly need to learn some more about it :)
 
Hi,

I've been using macs and PCs professionally since 1990. I have always had a mac at home.
Once you've switched you will never go back.

I have the 20" Imac at home. Buy your memory from Crucial 2GB £51 compared with £190 from Apple.

The new Leopard OS will blow your mind when it comes out next month.

It will take a short while to adjust....but everything just works...and works well. I've had mine 18 months now and it hasn't crashed once and I use lots of professional software on it together with utilities I have downloaded. Any printer or camera will connect automatically no need for special drivers, unlike vista.

You'll wonder why you didn't switch years ago. Using a computer will now become both fun and a real pleasure.

If Bill Gates hadn't conned IBM into using DOS we would all be using great software now not just those with macs.

As you guessed I am completely fanatical about macs....talk to anyone who uses one and you will find the same enthusiasm....wonder why!
 
24"

I got a 24" Imac about 6 months ago after about 10 years of Windoze. I'll say this, If you've got 10 years experience of windoze then switching to OSX will be easy enough for you. I'd like to think of myself as pretty competent on a P.C (I tend to get asked all the questions in the office etc if you get my drift)

There's one phrase that sums a Mac up.................It just works. Simple as that, straight out of the box. Plug in a device and it runs, install some software and it runs, ask it to do something and it just does it and bloody quickly. Nothing seems to conflict with anything else and the quality is faultless. I'm told that I've become a Mac snob after deserting Microsoft after so many years and "of course you're going to say it's great because you've bought one" Then I show it to them and what it does and how quickly and easily and they change thier tune.

I know I'm biased but I'd never ever go back, Not to XP, Vista or whatever they bring out next. It's a bold investment to make blind beacuse it's fair to say that thier not cheap but I feel fairly certain that every Mac owner on here would agree that it's the best computer move they ever made!

It's almost like the change from Jap sportsbike to GS, It's a little different at first but once you're used to it, it opens up a whole new world to you!

.................Time for me to stop now me thinks;)
 
sounds like a winner to me, think i'll wait until leopard ships tho, looks the canines bits!

anyone use photoshop CS or lightroom, how does the ram cope, I have 3gb in my desktop and that struggles sometimes with RAW files

Oh, and how good is the video messaging, compared to say msn?

and do msn etc have the same functionality on macs?
 
This is nice to hear

I have a 21 inch/320G Imac on order after lining Bill Gates pockets for 20 years. It feels a bit of a gamble stepping into the unknown but I need a 2nd PC just to take care of video/audio/pictures/mail/browising and the Imac really impressed me. I went ahead and ordered online before leopard came out because they'd send me a £75 evoucher and after spending weeks going into the Apple store I made up my mind.

Something that's hard to get my head around is not needing any ant-virus, just using the inbuilt firewall. I don't know whether I trust "they just don't make viruses for Apples", particularly when I've had to rebuild my home PC from scratch after getting caught out once.

BTW, I got another £20 off when I ordered because I tried to add dotmac which was discounted by £20 if you ordered at the same time. Though in ,my hsopping basket and should have gone thru it wasn't on the final bill of materials. I rung to complain saying I lost my £20 incentive and they refunded my card the £20 because they said it was an issue with the Apple site. I read up some more and general concensus was that Apple has some hosting/capacity constraingts on that maybe I should wait .. still, that was £95 off in the end :D

Looking forward to getting it in the next few days.
 
Eunuch said:
Something that's hard to get my head around is not needing any ant-virus, just using the inbuilt firewall. I don't know whether I trust "they just don't make viruses for Apples", particularly when I've had to rebuild my home PC from scratch after getting caught out once.
Click to expand...

Got my first Mac (an LCII) in the mid 90's. Have run macs ever since = 11+ years and have NEVER had any kind of 'virus' attack.

(and have never run any kind of antivirus programmes)

Trust. :thumb2
 
I love Macs

Yup, use full CS suite plus Dreamweaver, Flash, Final Cut Pro etc with 2GB no problems. Macs were built for these programmes. (but you will need 2GB RAM - remember Crucial is by far cheaper than Apple installed memory).

That's the only downside of buying the mac, they don't come with lots of memory as standard. Mine came with 512mb which I chucked out and replaced with 2 x 1GB chips from Crucial.

MSN messenger - exactly the same. Enjoy guys.

Mike
 
anyone use photoshop CS or lightroom, how does the ram cope, I have 3gb in my desktop and that struggles sometimes with RAW files

I use CS and can open 30 odd big pictures (3600 x 2400) without any problem, It just grinds them out. 2GB of ram though.
 
DivX on the Mac

Hi Scottykm,

Forgot to mention....yes you can play DivX movies. Just go to the DivX site and download the macOS codecs.

Use Handbrake for ripping DVDs to MPEG for your iPod or viewing on the Mac. Time to start thinking about MacTV now!!!!!
 
Mike Gough said:
Hi Scottykm,

Forgot to mention....yes you can play DivX movies. Just go to the DivX site and download the macOS codecs.

Use Handbrake for ripping DVDs to MPEG for your iPod or viewing on the Mac. Time to start thinking about MacTV now!!!!!
Click to expand...

Where will I get Handbrake from?



Edit.....got it!
 
with respect to the question about IM above, you can use adium (www.adiumx.com), signs in quite happily to msn/icq/y!/.mac all at the same time. Shype also works fine for video chat as well as .mac.
 
My concern would be about compatibility issues if I were to make the switch.

Having used PC’s for 15 years all my data, company accounts, VAT records, letters, medical notes and photographs have been saved using PC software.

I realise that .bmp files and .jpg will open just as easily on a MAC, but what about all the .doc files, excel files, the templates which I have spent years getting just how I want them.

My partner uses MAC’s (macbook pro) when we exchange documents 30% of the time they fail to open, often they will open but loose all formatting information.

Before anyone shouts “you can easily overcome that” she works as a professional proof reader and gets sent files form many sources (PC’s and MAC). She spends hours trying to open incompatible files has has never found a suitable solution except loading Microsoft software on the MAC, which she is reluctant to do (for some reason).

That really frustrates me, and I suppose is what stops me making the switch myself. The only acceptable option seems to be to have a PC and a MAC.
 
Whele said:
My concern would be about compatibility issues if I were to make the switch.

Having used PC’s for 15 years all my data, company accounts, VAT records, letters, medical notes and photographs have been saved using PC software.

I realise that .bmp files and .jpg will open just as easily on a MAC, but what about all the .doc files, excel files, the templates which I have spent years getting just how I want them.

My partner uses MAC’s (macbook pro) when we exchange documents 30% of the time they fail to open, often they will open but loose all formatting information.

Before anyone shouts “you can easily overcome that” she works as a professional proof reader and gets sent files form many sources (PC’s and MAC). She spends hours trying to open incompatible files has has never found a suitable solution except loading Microsoft software on the MAC, which she is reluctant to do (for some reason).

That really frustrates me, and I suppose is what stops me making the switch myself. The only acceptable option seems to be to have a PC and a MAC.
Click to expand...
In my experience "professional proof reader" means just that, not computer genius. I run both a MAC and PC and have no problems. I presume she has office for MAC.

No mick taking but really, no problems. Both machines sit side by side...
 
From my own experiences I'd suggest your wife will continue to experience problems with different file types, while many programmes will open Microsoft Office files it doesn't easily cope with templates and formatting.

The only way to overcome this would be for her to receive the files in PDF format and not use the native file types.

As some of the clients are Mac based this problem won't go away by staying with Microsoft OS based systems so compound your misery and stick with inferior hardware :nenau ;)
 
judge said:
From my own experiences I'd suggest your wife will continue to experience problems with different file types, while many programmes will open Microsoft Office files it doesn't easily cope with templates and formatting.

The only way to overcome this would be for her to receive the files in PDF format and not use the native file types.

As some of the clients are Mac based this problem won't go away by staying with Microsoft OS based systems so compound your misery and stick with inferior hardware :nenau ;)
Click to expand...

I must say that, I disagree with the above.
 
If you install openoffice it'll open a lot of the legacy formats from microsoft o.k. - You can then resave or export as pdf in whatever format you like.

www.neooffice.org

The tricky part is usually font substitution between the two operating systems and applications, it can change layout if the font is substituted.
 
richie said:
I must say that, I disagree with the above.
Click to expand...

Well I certainly which my experience echoed yours as I'd still be typing this from a rather loverly dual cored powermac that was once sat here instead of this 6 year old single cored AMD processor driven beige box.

However Leopard will soon be upon us and the 20" iMac is looking lusher than ever and not pricey either @ £800 inc VAT :augie
 
judge said:
Well I certainly wish (i guess) my experience echoed yours as I'd still be typing this from a rather loverly dual cored powermac that was once sat here instead of this 6 year old single cored AMD processor driven beige box.

However Leopard will soon be upon us and the 20" iMac is looking lusher than ever and not pricey either @ £800 inc VAT :augie
Click to expand...
Andy, no offence meant or taken (I presume) but really that is my experience. And as you may remember I spent a fair few years in the business.

BTW I also spent a few years "supporting" Translators, secretaries etc. And was continually amazed about how little such "professionals" knew about there computers....
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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