About To Order My iMac! What To Do First?

[davekarn]

Hey guys, I know I remember seeing a topic similar to this before but couldn't find it after performing a search. I'm placing my order tomorrow on a 24" 2.8GHZ 750GB HDD iMac, so I'm looking to the wizened Apple community for some helpful (and cool) Apps, Widgets (and good Widget sites) and anything else you recommend for a new switcher! Thanks in advance guys!

EDIT: Can you guys provide some reliable websites too so that I'm not downloading from some d-bags. Thanks again!

~Dave

 

[swiftaw]

Download Perian and Flip4mac so you can play windows media files

 

[HLdan]

I would highly recommend trying out iWork 08 rather than installing Mac Office 04. It's already included as a trial on the iMac and it's recommended to buy it as it only cost $79.00 U.S. It's a full featured suite of apps for presentation, spreadsheet and word processing. It's fully compatible to transfer and receive files with MS Office 2007 including the new XML file format. It runs swift and it's build for Intel based Macs.

 

[davekarn]

I would highly recommend trying out iWork 08 rather than installing Mac Office 04. It's already included as a trial on the iMac and it's recommended to buy it as it only cost $79.00 U.S. It's a full featured suite of apps for presentation, spreadsheet and word processing. It's fully compatible to transfer and receive files with MS Office 2007 including the new XML file format. It runs swift and it's build for Intel based Macs.

Definitely giving that a shot. I've already factored iWork into my pricing when I pre-built my iMac (to see where the costs were at). Knowing that it works with Word, PPT and Excel documents encourages me even more! Plus I get the Student Discount on everything and iWork is only $71!

 

[davekarn]

I'm a college student right now, because the Army let me out for a couple years to get my degree and become an officer, but I am far from rich. I just have been budgeting my money so that I can buy the things I've been wanting and trying my best not to buy things I truly don't need (mainly video games, and with a 360 and PS3, it takes a lot of discipline on my part to not buy any).

 

[oduinnin]

Check these out ...

Software for Mac

widgets

VersionTracker

Those should get you started.

 

[davekarn]

Software for Mac

widgets

VersionTracker

Those should get you started.

Thanks for those! Do you know of anything along the lines of handbrake or mactheripper? I read a lot about those on here and was hoping to get some apps such as these that most of you find useful.

 

[oduinnin]

Thanks for those! Do you know of anything along the lines of handbrake or mactheripper? I read a lot about those on here and was hoping to get some apps such as these that most of you find useful.

Both can be found on VersionTracker.

 

[wackymacky]

Want to wait for Leopard?

Given that Apple is (suposidly) due to release Mac OS X version 10.5 "Leopard" with in the next 2-3 weeks I'm not sure if I'd wait a couple of weeks before I bought.

 

[jepjepjep]

Download Perian and Flip4mac so you can play windows media files

I'd suggest downloading VLC for media files. I've fallen in love with it, it's so compatible!

 

[jepjepjep]

I forgot to add the link for VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). Also, a really great free text editor is TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/).

 

[davekarn]

Given that Apple is (suposidly) due to release Mac OS X version 10.5 "Leopard" with in the next 2-3 weeks I'm not sure if I'd wait a couple of weeks before I bought.

I know that Leopard and Vista are two completely different things, but after the debacle I experienced with getting Vista right off of the bat, I'm gonna hold off on Leopard, at least for a little bit. I see that they have one last update to Tiger before the release of Leopard, which is comforting and I can get Leopard for $70 through my school. I'm really sick of holding out and waiting any longer and also not knowing exactly when Leopard will come out makes the wait more agonizing.