Compatibility Q's

[techie4life]

hey guys (and gals), I am going to finally be making the switch to mac once the new iMacs come out. I just wanted to make sure that all of my stuff is going to work like it did with this PC. I have a Dell AIO 922 printer and a Lexmark Optra S printer, both of which are networked. will the iMac be compatible with these network printers? I also have an Olympus Stylus 710 digital camera, will this work with iPhoto? I have a Panasonic PV-GS320 miniDV camcorder (amazing video quality for a miniDV, at an affordable price), and I just wanted to make sure that this will work with iMovie HD. I have an HP Photosmart A716 Photo Printer that I will be directly connecting to the iMac, and I just wanted to make sure it is going to work. I am thinking that my Seagate 160Gb external hard drive should have no problem being compatible, but please tell me if I am wrong. I have all of my files on the External ready to be transferred to the iMac. I shouldn't have a problem moving these files, even though they originate from a PC right? I also am wanting an opinion on OpenOffice. I was thinking that I will just download either OpenOffice or NeoOffice (OpenOffice that doesn't use X11 (good or bad thing?)) I really don't want to dish out $149 for an office suite that runs slow... Anyways, I think that's it. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

[Matt342]

Dell printers aren't designed to work on Macs.

The Lexmark will work if you install the Lexmark drivers that are bundled with OS X (or download it online)

The Olympus will work with iPhoto.

Panasonic PV-GS320 - will work with iMovie.

HP Photosmart A716 - will work.

Seagate will work.

iWork 08 will be able to open OpenOffice files.

~Matt

hey guys (and gals), I am going to finally be making the switch to mac once the new iMacs come out. I just wanted to make sure that all of my stuff is going to work like it did with this PC. I have a Dell AIO 922 printer and a Lexmark Optra S printer, both of which are networked. will the iMac be compatible with these network printers? I also have an Olympus Stylus 710 digital camera, will this work with iPhoto? I have a Panasonic PV-GS320 miniDV camcorder (amazing video quality for a miniDV, at an affordable price), and I just wanted to make sure that this will work with iMovie HD. I have an HP Photosmart A716 Photo Printer that I will be directly connecting to the iMac, and I just wanted to make sure it is going to work. I am thinking that my Seagate 160Gb external hard drive should have no problem being compatible, but please tell me if I am wrong. I have all of my files on the External ready to be transferred to the iMac. I shouldn't have a problem moving these files, even though they originate from a PC right? I also am wanting an opinion on OpenOffice. I was thinking that I will just download either OpenOffice or NeoOffice (OpenOffice that doesn't use X11 (good or bad thing?)) I really don't want to dish out $149 for an office suite that runs slow... Anyways, I think that's it. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

[OutThere]

Dell printers aren't designed to work on Macs.

You might be able to fenagle it into working...the AIO 922 is just a re-branded Lexmark X5270. Mac drivers are fully available for the Lexmark X5270, so, with luck, the dell may be compatible with your mac.

 

[techie4life]

I am not saying that I want iWork, I was thinking I could just use NeoOffice as my office suite and be done with it. I have heard that it is actually pretty good for a free product, at least, that's what macworld says. so the lexmark will work, even though it's networked, right? and the rest of the other stiff will work other than the dell printer, which might work if I can get the lexmark versions drivers. sweet guys, thanks for the help, any other comments would be appreciated.

 

[Pontificus]

Lexmark driver

Did you find out if that Lexmark driver works? I couldn't get it to work, but that's not saying much...

 

[Makosuke]

I am not saying that I want iWork, I was thinking I could just use NeoOffice as my office suite and be done with it. I have heard that it is actually pretty good for a free product, at least, that's what macworld says.

A little late, but if you're still looking for suggestions:

NeoOffice works reasonably well--I use it at work occasionally. Startup times are rather slow, and it's not what you'd call a "pretty" interface (then again, neither is Word), but it opens, works on, and saves Word, PPT, and Excel documents just fine. Certainly not bad for free.

One suggestion, though: If you're not doing anything really fancy word-processing wise, check out TextEdit. It comes preinstalled on every mac (it's the rough equivalent to Notepad), and it's actually a very nice, capable basic word processor. You can fuss with fonts, tabs, margins, alignment, lists, line spacing, do basic picture insertion, and it uses OSX's built-in spellchecker (which works fine).

It doesn't do any of the fancy pagination stuff, hyphenation, multicolumn stuff, precise image alignment, or any of the "business" features of Word, but it does the job for just about any non-heavy-duty word processing I do. Its native save format is RTF, which is pretty widely supported, and it also can open and save basic Word documents.

Not bad for a little pre-installed app.

 

[techie4life]

Did you find out if that Lexmark driver works? I couldn't get it to work, but that's not saying much...

I'm not sure...I don't have a mac yet. just waiting for August 7th at 1:00pm EST. I have a personal shopping appointment at the Apple store to hopefully pick up a new iMac.