PC User Looking to Switch...Some Basic Beginner-Type Questions

[RunawayTruck]

First off....what a great site. I've spent the last several hours just browsing through and learning more about Macs. I have used Macs before (very briefly) and have purchased several versions of the iPhone. I'm just looking for some information that hopefully you guys can help me with.

- The Dell desktop I am replacing is 6 years old. I think it has 1 GB of RAM with an 80 GB hard drive. So, it's easy to see that any computer would be an upgrade from that.

- I plan to use the iMac mainly for general computer tasks: internet, email, completing schoolwork, keeping track of appointments and contacts, some video watching, storing and editing photos (nothing extreme), editing some home videos (again, nothing extreme), and perhaps watching TV.

- I have decided that the base line iMac would probably be more than I would ever need. Sure, I'd love to have an i3 or i5 in the 21.5' if they were available when they refresh the iMacs, but I think the C2D would be just fine for me. Does that seem about right?

- Haven't researched it a ton yet, but I was wondering if anyone could recommend TV tuners for an iMac. I have Comcast with a cable box. Hoping to use a splitter or something else to wire cable to my iMac as well. Any hints/tips?

- iWork? I can open Word documents, as well as save documents that I create in .doc format? Someone told me I could do that and I just wanted to make sure. I'm in college and most of my teachers send attachments or require assignments via Word documents.

- I'm really not close to an Apple retail store, so buying online is probably going to have to be my method. I can get the education discount of $50 from Apple, but I think there is a better deal at PCConnectionExpress.com. The base line there is $1149, with a $50 mail in rebate to make the total $1099. Is this a reliable site that anyone knows of? It is listed as on official Apple retailer, just wondering if anyone had any experience with them. It seems like there is no tax in my state from them with free shipping. Is there any reason not to buy from them....or to buy directly from Apple instead of a website like that?

- I think that is all the questions I have for now. Sorry this was so long, but I'm just trying to get everything sorted out so I can make my purchase as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for any help that you guys can offer!

 

[maf2k8]

I have just recently within the past month or 2 switched to Mac/Apple and have sold off ALL my PC/Windows toys......

I will answer to the best of my knowledge and for the record, So far the switch has been awesome! Not one headache or annoying problem! Mac/Apple is VERY smooth and i think Windows has a longgggg way to go before they catch up. Everything is integrated into OSX so everything is so much easier and snappy!

Also note, That you can easily install and run Windows on a Mac. I am a complete noob with Macs but installing Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro was simple! and it runs just as good as it did on my PC.




- I have decided that the base line iMac would probably be more than I would ever need. Sure, I'd love to have an i3 or i5 in the 21.5' if they were available when they refresh the iMacs, but I think the C2D would be just fine for me. Does that seem about right?
Coming from your old rig, the C2D would be perfectly fine...You can get the fastest C2D refurb for 1299.00? ( if thats the route you want to go )

I came from a i7 2.93GHz DELL XPS 730x, So i went for the 27" i7 iMac myself.


- Haven't researched it a ton yet, but I was wondering if anyone could recommend TV tuners for an iMac. I have Comcast with a cable box. Hoping to use a splitter or something else to wire cable to my iMac as well. Any hints/tips?

I never used any TV tuners on PCs or Mac so i really cant comment much on that, though i am sure there is a external tuner out there ( i have seen many ) that will work with Mac

- iWork? I can open Word documents, as well as save documents that I create in .doc format? Someone told me I could do that and I just wanted to make sure. I'm in college and most of my teachers send attachments or require assignments via Word documents.

I am almost certain you can, I have not used iWork myself, I personally use Microsoft Office for Mac

- I'm really not close to an Apple retail store, so buying online is probably going to have to be my method. I can get the education discount of $50 from Apple, but I think there is a better deal at PCConnectionExpress.com. The base line there is $1149, with a $50 mail in rebate to make the total $1099. Is this a reliable site that anyone knows of? It is listed as on official Apple retailer, just wondering if anyone had any experience with them. It seems like there is no tax in my state from them with free shipping. Is there any reason not to buy from them....or to buy directly from Apple instead of a website like that?

I have never dealt with PCC but i have noticed that Amazon sells Apple for a little lower then what Apple sells for and Amazon has no tax in most states, is trusted and has free shipping ( the Apple warranty is the same no matter where you buy your iMac, so no worries there )

- I think that is all the questions I have for now. Sorry this was so long, but I'm just trying to get everything sorted out so I can make my purchase as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for any help that you guys can offer!

 

[emptyCup]

Yes, a base iMac will be better than a 6 year old Dell.

Elgato for TV tuners

Pages will open and save a Word file in Word format. Be aware that no word processor, other than Word, does this flawlessly. In my experience, Pages does it best. If you need to collaborate with someone using Word then you need the Mac version of Word. Otherwise Pages is fine. Download a free iWork trial from Apple.

I don't know anything about that PCConnectionExpress.com. Maybe someone else here does.

Look at Apple's Switch 101 and Mac 101.

Best wishes

 

[blinkin182]

I have just recently within the past month or 2 switched to Mac/Apple and have sold off ALL my PC/Windows toys......

I will answer to the best of my knowledge and for the record, So far the switch has been awesome! Not one headache or annoying problem! Mac/Apple is VERY smooth and i think Windows has a longgggg way to go before they catch up. Everything is integrated into OSX so everything is so much easier and snappy!

Also note, That you can easily install and run Windows on a Mac. I am a complete noob with Macs but installing Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro was simple! and it runs just as good as it did on my PC.




- I have decided that the base line iMac would probably be more than I would ever need. Sure, I'd love to have an i3 or i5 in the 21.5' if they were available when they refresh the iMacs, but I think the C2D would be just fine for me. Does that seem about right?
Coming from your old rig, the C2D would be perfectly fine...You can get the fastest C2D refurb for 1299.00? ( if thats the route you want to go )

I came from a i7 2.93GHz DELL XPS 730x, So i went for the 27" i7 iMac myself.

I currently have a 2.16ghz C2D and it works well for most of the tasks you describe. Am thinking of updating to i3 or i5 because I do a lot of encoding and personally would like to future proof my next computer. But for you I think CD2 will do just fine


- Haven't researched it a ton yet, but I was wondering if anyone could recommend TV tuners for an iMac. I have Comcast with a cable box. Hoping to use a splitter or something else to wire cable to my iMac as well. Any hints/tips?

I never used any TV tuners on PCs or Mac so i really cant comment much on that, though i am sure there is a external tuner out there ( i have seen many ) that will work with Mac
Elgato works pretty well


- iWork? I can open Word documents, as well as save documents that I create in .doc format? Someone told me I could do that and I just wanted to make sure. I'm in college and most of my teachers send attachments or require assignments via Word documents.

I am almost certain you can, I have not used iWork myself, I personally use Microsoft Office for Mac

Pages works pretty well with Office documents, but there are sometimes some conversion errors. I like Pages a lot though and there's always NeoOffice or OpenOffice that you can use for free to complement iWork.


- I'm really not close to an Apple retail store, so buying online is probably going to have to be my method. I can get the education discount of $50 from Apple, but I think there is a better deal at PCConnectionExpress.com. The base line there is $1149, with a $50 mail in rebate to make the total $1099. Is this a reliable site that anyone knows of? It is listed as on official Apple retailer, just wondering if anyone had any experience with them. It seems like there is no tax in my state from them with free shipping. Is there any reason not to buy from them....or to buy directly from Apple instead of a website like that?

I have never dealt with PCC but i have noticed that Amazon sells Apple for a little lower then what Apple sells for and Amazon has no tax in most states, is trusted and has free shipping ( the Apple warranty is the same no matter where you buy your iMac, so no worries there )

I've bought most of my macs directly from AppleStore (online) but a few from retailers. I don't live in US so I don't know PCConnectionExpress.com. There's a "buying tips" section on the forums, here and there is a thread on fraudulent retailers as a sticky on top. But as the previous post says, the apple warranty remains the same wherever you buy it from (unless fraudulent or 2nd hand of course..).


- I think that is all the questions I have for now. Sorry this was so long, but I'm just trying to get everything sorted out so I can make my purchase as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for any help that you guys can offer!

See my comment in red

 

[wrldwzrd89]

First off....what a great site. I've spent the last several hours just browsing through and learning more about Macs. I have used Macs before (very briefly) and have purchased several versions of the iPhone. I'm just looking for some information that hopefully you guys can help me with.

- The Dell desktop I am replacing is 6 years old. I think it has 1 GB of RAM with an 80 GB hard drive. So, it's easy to see that any computer would be an upgrade from that.

- I plan to use the iMac mainly for general computer tasks: internet, email, completing schoolwork, keeping track of appointments and contacts, some video watching, storing and editing photos (nothing extreme), editing some home videos (again, nothing extreme), and perhaps watching TV.

- I have decided that the base line iMac would probably be more than I would ever need. Sure, I'd love to have an i3 or i5 in the 21.5' if they were available when they refresh the iMacs, but I think the C2D would be just fine for me. Does that seem about right?

- Haven't researched it a ton yet, but I was wondering if anyone could recommend TV tuners for an iMac. I have Comcast with a cable box. Hoping to use a splitter or something else to wire cable to my iMac as well. Any hints/tips?

- iWork? I can open Word documents, as well as save documents that I create in .doc format? Someone told me I could do that and I just wanted to make sure. I'm in college and most of my teachers send attachments or require assignments via Word documents.

- I'm really not close to an Apple retail store, so buying online is probably going to have to be my method. I can get the education discount of $50 from Apple, but I think there is a better deal at PCConnectionExpress.com. The base line there is $1149, with a $50 mail in rebate to make the total $1099. Is this a reliable site that anyone knows of? It is listed as on official Apple retailer, just wondering if anyone had any experience with them. It seems like there is no tax in my state from them with free shipping. Is there any reason not to buy from them....or to buy directly from Apple instead of a website like that?

- I think that is all the questions I have for now. Sorry this was so long, but I'm just trying to get everything sorted out so I can make my purchase as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for any help that you guys can offer!

Regarding your iWork question, as far as I know, iWork doesn't save things in anything other than its native formats. It can open Office files, though. If you need to save in .doc or whatever, OpenOffice.org does this quite well, and is free - and I use it, so I can recommend it. There's also NeoOffice, which is basically a Mac-specific rewrite of OpenOffice.org in Java, with Mac-specific integration features. It lags behind the latest OpenOffice release, which, along with the fact that OpenOffice.org is more like a native Mac OS X application since version 2, is why I don't use NeoOffice.

 

[blinkin182]

Regarding your iWork question, as far as I know, iWork doesn't save things in anything other than its native formats. It can open Office files, though. If you need to save in .doc or whatever, OpenOffice.org does this quite well, and is free - and I use it, so I can recommend it. There's also NeoOffice, which is basically a Mac-specific rewrite of OpenOffice.org in Java, with Mac-specific integration features. It lags behind the latest OpenOffice release, which, along with the fact that OpenOffice.org is more like a native Mac OS X application since version 2, is why I don't use NeoOffice.

iWork by default saves things in its own formats but it does enable you to export to doc/xls/ppt.
see here: http://www.apple.com/iwork/compatibility/
OpenOffice/NeoOffice, both are good alternatives to Microsoft Office. At work, we've used NeoOffice for many years. I hear OpenOffice is much improved with the native Mac OS X look.

 

[Vantage Point]

Regarding your iWork question, as far as I know, iWork doesn't save things in anything other than its native formats.

Not true, iWorks can save in MS formats like .doc... You can download a fully functional 30 days free trial from Apple to test yourself. I did and now own it.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Regarding your iWork question, as far as I know, iWork doesn't save things in anything other than its native formats.

Not true, iWorks can save in MS formats like .doc... You can download a fully functional 30 days free trial from Apple to test yourself. I did and now own it.

Do you mean save, or export? Because when I tried out iWorks, I dumped it because whenever I would open a .doc file, it wouldn't let me save it, rather I would either have to save as an iwork file, or export it and overwrite the file. It doesn't sound like much, but file -> export -> save as MS Word document -> Save as became aggravating after about 2 times.

P.S. Oh yeah, I'd get MS Office 2008, or if you can wait, MS Office 2010 when it comes out later this year. I wouldn't use iWorks for every day student use.

 

[blinkin182]

Do you mean save, or export? Because when I tried out iWorks, I dumped it because whenever I would open a .doc file, it wouldn't let me save it, rather I would either have to save as an iwork file, or export it and overwrite the file. It doesn't sound like much, but file -> export -> save as MS Word document -> Save as became aggravating after about 2 times.

P.S. Oh yeah, I'd get MS Office 2008, or if you can wait, MS Office 2010 when it comes out later this year. I wouldn't use iWorks for every day student use.

see here: http://www.apple.com/iwork/compatibility/

for the different ways that you can "save as" in microsoft formats... it's not that difficult, but its a question of taste and habit I suppose. As the previous post suggests, download trial version and try it out...