Help for a switcher

[Haouka]

Hello

I received my first mac one week ago (iMac 17" 512MB 160GB) and I directly installed 10.3!

The computer and the system are great, even my wife likes it. However coming from Windows (I use Dell laptop at work for 7 years now) I have several questions/problems:

1) iPhoto tends to get slow (I now have 500 photos) + I have two types of picture (hi res and low res) but there is no way to sort according to picture size

2) Address Book is really really slow when I'm in edit mode (which is frustrating as Outlook is one of the main tools I use, with MS office). Should I go to Entourage?

3) I dont understand Appleworks (not practical, ugly,...). Is MS Office the alternative (I'm used to it on Windows)?

4) iSync with my Palm TT is really slow (I'm using BT)

What would you advise?
Thanks!

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Can only answer to question 3. Before I switched I used Office mainly and still use it at work. I tried to find another solution on the Mac like AppleWorks (don't like it) and OpenOffice. But in the end I ended with purchasing Office. And I am now really happy with my Mac. Main problem of OpenOffice was the incompatibility with Office files - espacially PowerPoint and Excel. Hope that helped

 

[Makosuke]

I can offer at least a bit more advice:

1) iPhoto just isn't very fast. There is, unfortunately, not much you can do about that since you've already got a decent computer with sufficient RAM. If it's frustrating enough, you might look on VersionTracker.com for some of the shareware alternative applications.

Another possible solution, which my dad has tried, is to only use iPhoto for camera downloads and browsing; he imports things in to iPhoto, but moves them to a seperate, folder-only organizing system he likes, then removes them from the iPhoto library. He reimports albums when he wants to browse them, and by keeping the library small(ish), it runs well enough for him on a similar computer to yours.

This may or may not be an acceptable solution for you.

2) I don't use Address Book extensively, but I've certainly never noticed it being slow, so I find this a bit surprising. Did it slow down as you added contacts, or was it slow from the begining, in which case what happens if you create a temporary new user--is it slow there, or ok, indicating there might be something wrong.

3) If you're used to Office on the PC and don't like Appleworks, go ahead and buy Office X for the Mac--it's probably better than the PC version, and in any case will be familiar. No issues with exchanging documents that way, either.

If you only want a simple Word processor, just for the heck of it you might try downloading Mellel, which is very lightweight (text formatting and tables, nothing fancy), but a smooth word processor that has an interface similar to Office. It's free to try, and if you're on broadband it'll only take a minute.

4) No idea on that front.

 

[Powerbook G5]

1) I don't really use iPhoto, since I downloaded the free Kodak Easy Share program from their website to use with my camera and manage my own photos that I organize into certain folders and edit with Photoshop.

2) Address book runs really fast for me, perhaps there is a corrupt plist file? Or, perhaps you need to repair permissions? Go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility>Repair Permissions. If you did an upgrade install then I can almost guarantee this would fix quite a few issues for you.

3) I don't like Appleworks, either. I use MS Office and it works great for me. I also agree that it is much better than the Windows version, so if you don't mind the cost, go ahead and buy it, since you are already familiar with Office, it won't be difficult to use or understand so I would recommend it if you like it.

3) Not sure about iSync, I only use it for syncing with my iMac account since my phone is non bluetooth and I don't have a PDA. Perhaps there is a setting with your Palm TT you could adjust or it might just be that's the fastest it can sync.

Hope that helps and enjoy your new Mac.

 

[crap freakboy]

3/ try http://www.iview-multimedia.com/ its not cheap but depends how much to need to catalogue...least give it a trial? Personally I think its worth it....iPhoto is too sluggish for me

 

[5300cs]

My iPhoto library is 2477 images total (1.5gig+) and it's sluggish for me too. What I did was go under Preferences and remove the drop shadow from the thumbnails, and display a black background. That speeded things up for me (at least a little.) I still use pretty big thumbnails though.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

congrats and get more ram, high g4's do better with a gig and would say its about ideal, it will help a lot on all your stuff so i advise Ram and maybe a few of the latest greatest games!

 

[jilter]

Originally posted by Makosuke



Another possible solution, which my dad has tried, is to only use iPhoto for camera downloads and browsing; he imports things in to iPhoto, but moves them to a seperate, folder-only organizing system he likes, then removes them from the iPhoto library. He reimports albums when he wants to browse them, and by keeping the library small(ish), it runs well enough for him on a similar computer to yours.


Makosuke,
Would you care to share the name of the program your dad uses to organize his photos? I have not yet started getting my pic on the hard drive of my new Imac, but in fooloing with IPhoto, I was not impressed. I would like to start with an interfacce that I will stick with.
Thanks.