Taking the Plunge tommorrow!

[rafster]

Hi there,

I am a long time Windows user, and tommorrow I will be purchasing a Macbook (the most basic version, with 1gb RAM).

I am pretty excited with the thought of playing around with a new OS having not been exposed to Mac OSX really before. I do plan to have Windows XP on it as I cannot afford to repurchase Mac licences for the programs I use (At £300 a shot, it's too much!)

I am a postgraduate student, and I needed a smallish laptop I could lug to classes with the main use of using Stata, reading PDFs (Journals), Mathematica and Scientific Workplace. The Macbook was the best buy by far thanks to the HE Discount. It will go along with the Dell XPS M170 I have at uni along with the Formac 20" LCD I have for work. The XPS is far too big to carry around

Does anyone have any tips when I get it tommorrow? Is it worth getting Office for Mac?

Thanks, and hopefully be posting more.

 

[ColdFlame87]

Only thing i can tell you is enjoy your new computer man . Office is better suited to run on Windows (i mean it is a microsoft product) so if you own a copy of it for windows then dont purchase it for mac, if however you dont or dont want to bother switching to windows every time you want to write a document then purchase office for mac, the educational version is at a good price, or if youre doing simple and snazzy documents and presentations and want something native to apple try iWork,whatever you choose im sure you will be happy

 

[rafster]

Only thing i can tell you is enjoy your new computer man . Office is better suited to run on Windows (i mean it is a microsoft product) so if you own a copy of it for windows then dont purchase it for mac, if however you dont or dont want to bother switching to windows every time you want to write a document then purchase office for mac, the educational version is at a good price, or if youre doing simple and snazzy documents and presentations and want something native to apple try iWork,whatever you choose im sure you will be happy

In seminars I would be in Mac mode (and probably when I am relaxing in my room), as I would be surfing and mostly reading PDFs.

In between when I am in the PG/Staff Room, I'd be in Windows mode. The thing is with Word 2003 I have tonnes of addins that dont work on the Mac Office (stuff for presentation of equations much better than the Equation Editor) and I use Scientific Workplace for all my drafts.

I just can't wait to get one, I must admit I have been a critic of the Mac in the past. Gonna muck around with it all weekend!!

 

[shakerbaby]

I took the plunge myself a few months ago. If you are like me you will enjoy exploring it, learning new things, and afterwhich I doubt you will go back to PCs and probably wonder why you didnt earlier.

BTW first thing you want to do is press the CTL, ALT, Command, 8 keys together.

 

[amac4me]

I wouldn't call it a "plunge". Think of it as a "jump" to a better OS and platform.

Congrats on your pending purchase.

 

[doubledangerbat]

BTW first thing you want to do is press the CTL, ALT, Command, 8 keys together.

Aww... but then she would see everything in inversed color! Meanie.

 

[Collin973]

Congrats! I just took the jump this morning. I purchased the C2D MBP in my sig. I've used OS X for about 3 months now and I love it. I barely touch my pc desktop. Right now, I have a 12" PB G4, and I only use my desktop to run a small windows program for work. Once my MBP gets here, my desktop is going to be lonely. (I will be using the 20" FP that's attached to it though).

You're going to love it!

 

[elppa]

First check everything to make sure it is working ok.

This is difficult, as it is new, so you don't know how it should work, but if anything is found faulty within 14 days the product will be replaced.

Next - some companies (like Adobe) will send low price/free copies of Mac software if you own the windows versions (obviously providing you have a valid serial number).

Next if you do buy Office:Mac 2004 don't expect it to be as "snappy" as the windows version - as it is not optimised for the Intel chip.

Same goes for nearly all the Adobe products.

Good news is practically all of these applications will be updated within the forthcoming months.

Lastly well done on going for 1GB of RAM - a wise move as OS X needs this to run comfortably..

When installing Windows XP read and follow all the instructions Apple give you carefully. Provided you do you will have no problems. I completed the whole process in about 2 hours.

Finally, if you have never owned a notebook before (or even if you have), read the info here:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

That's the only practical advice I can give you. If I think of anything more I'll add it here.

 

[newmacuser13]

You will enjoy the new experience. I made the switch 12 days ago and couldn't be happier, got almost the same system you are getting. (I opted for the 1GB RAM, 80 gig HD, a standard apple store configuration. If you are going to boot camp for win xp, which requires a 10 GB partition, you may really want the larger harddrive). One of the things I found really nice is a "sleep" function that really works and uses virtually no battery power. You open the lid, it start up and is ready to go in a second or two (add 5 seconds or so before the wireless connection is back, but you really can't complain). Best of all, the power does not drain down materially while sleeping all day, so it really encourages you to just carry the laptop around in sleep mode, open the lid and dive in. My two year old Sony Vaio laptop would sleep (after some delay going to sleep, and some delay waking up) but would use up considerable portions of the battery while sleeping. I understand that there is a difference in how OS X and Windows XP handles sleep, with the mac just powering the memory, the windows powering something more (?)

Second most enjoyable thing: no more Norton Internet Security slowing things down.