changing from windose to iMac soon

Hi Guys,
Bet you get a thousand questions here! :Blushing:

OK,
Changing over to iMac in about 2-4 weeks,
Main use is photo editing and internet use

Looking at the 27" iMac with i5 3.1GHZ and 8gb of ram
Not sure whether to stretch for the i7 or not, does not "appear" to be all that faster?
After doing a lot of research, I cannot see a great need for loading office 2011 for mac? Appears OS for the mac has word and spread sheets covered also?

Lastly, my old laptop appears to be showing signs of age, (like me ),
I believe I have to format a drive on the mac before I can start transferring data, (in my case, mainly images), ?
I understand the routine to be,
Format the USB drive on the mac
Download my data from the ms system to the drive
Then, upload the data to the mac with this drive?
Somebody said there was a limit, that is only 4 GB at a time?

Regards,
Gary

Welcome to the Mac world. As you've discovered this is a great place to ask questions.

Some users still find a need for Office 2011 but for many users the Apple programs Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are all that they need. Especially if the documents you transfer/share don't require complex formatting. There are also some free alternatives such as OpenOffice and LibreOffice.

If you already have an external drive that you are using with your PC and want to use that to transfer files you can. If you leave the drive formatted as NTFS your Mac will read the data on it. Writing to it would require third party software.

If you want to be able to use the drive with both machines and have the Mac write to it you could use a FAT 32 formatted drive. FAT 32 has a 4 GB file size limit but it's 4GB per file not the total amount transferred.

Welcome to Mac-Forums

For your stated use, the 27" iMac with the i5 should be completely fine. Do not do the memory upgrade through Apple, but rather do it yourself after you purchase the iMac. It takes 2 mins to do, VERY easy, and will end up being way cheaper than buying the memory from Apple.

Apple has a series of applications, Pages, Numbers, and Keynotes all are very cheap and do a very good job, so you can skip MS office if you want..

As far as flash drive goes, keep it in FAT32 format and that way you can copy files from your Windows machine to the Mac without any problems. If you format it for a Mac, then Windows will not be able to access it..

Tks Guys,

Much appreciated,
Just one more,

If I don't load office for the mac,
Will I still be able to open files transferred from "my documents",
For example,
Word, excel, adobe PDF's, etc,
Regards,
Gary

As long as you have some other program that opens these files you'll be able to open them Preview, for example, opens most PDFs. The Apple programs or free alternatives mentioned open most Office files.

Slydude said:

As long as you have some other program that opens these files you'll be able to open them Preview, for example, opens most PDFs. The Apple programs or free alternatives mentioned open most Office files.

Click to expand...

Thank you,
I'm starting to think I might get office for Mac just to at least open the data when I get it across,

Question?
If I do transfer my ms data across and open files with the Mac,
Can I then save them as a "Mac" file, I'm guessing at this stage but in "iWord" maybe?

As you can guess, there is a lot of data I would like to keep, starting to look like I may have to download an Adobe reader which would be no big deal but I do have a lot of word docs and a few excel, If I lost the excel data, I could live with that but would not want to loose all my camera and fly-fishing info, and quite a few guides on photo editing I have written for a friend

lastly,
What I'm trying to do is get all my data across and hopefully change all the documents to a Mac format, If that is not totally possible, I guess there is a good case to get the "Office for Mac 2011"
Regards,
Gary

I copied all my data from my Windows PC to an external hard drive when I switched a year ago. That gave me lots of breathing time to bring everything into my new iMac as I learned more about the Mac OS. A thumb drive would be slow and inconvenient if you have lots of files to transfer.

That interim hard drive should be formatted in a format that can be read/write by both Windows and Apple. Most come that way I think. A quick google search will take you to answers on formatting hard drives.

If you can afford Office for Mac, go for it. Then you are assured no format conversion problems. Excel is a better spreadsheet program than Numbers (so I've been told). If budget is an issue and your document needs are relatively basic, then go with Pages, Keynote and Numbers. They can open Office documents.

Get as much RAM as you can afford. I started wth 4 and soon realized that was not enough. I am doing OK with 12, but could use more You can order extra RAM pre installed for convenience, but it is more expensive that way compared to buying RAM compatible with your iMac and installing it yourself.

Plan your iTunes migration carefully. After much research online, I consolidated my iTunes files and folders on that external hard drive from my Windows PC in a way that made it easy to copy them from there to my new iMac. But plan carefully. Don't sync any iOS devices to the Mac until iTunes is fully transferred.

Think ahead about what program you will use on your new iMac to manage your photos. Like many Windows users, I had organized all my photots in Windows using a system of folders and subfolders. I copied that whole structure to the external hard drive, and then copied it to my iMac, and then imported it from there into Aperture. It took me a while to figure out how Aperture stores and organizes images, and I ended up deleting and rebuilding the Aperture library a couple of times, but that was easy because I had all the originals in that folder system copy from my PC.

Keep the old Windows PC around for a few months in case you discover something that did not get transferred initially.

Took me about three months to get fully settled down on the new iMac, but this approach worked great for me. I still have all those files from my old Windows PC on that external hard drive a year later, and have dipped into it once in a while. I never did need to go back to that old PC, but it just dawned on me where to find a file I've been missing!

Thank you for your detailed reply,

That has been a great help and made me think ahead about a few more options,
Firstly, I will try and find out about formatting for both operating systems, the guys at my local Apple agent I was not able to do that? Guess more research is the go

As for the images, I am a bit undecided but will at least transfer them to a Nikon browser for the Mac, then perhaps Adobe Lightroom at later date, I am getting excellent results with Nikon's Capture NX2 as I only shoot raw files but I can see Photoshop in the future for some options, at least elements for a starter

Thank you again for your timely advice,
FWIW,
I'm going for a 27" iMac with 16 gb ram and a TB portable drive and a i5 3.1GHz,
Budget is starting to blow out but hopefully, I can extend the life of my laptop another 2-4weeks and in the mean time get all data backed up on a suitably formatted drive,
Now, must do the google thing!
Regards,
Gary

If you're switching to Mac, why do you want to mess around with multiple-format drives?

Once you get your information on the Mac, you're not going back. Nobody ever does.

So just format any new external drives for Mac. They will perform better and you won't have to think about it.

Tks Guys,

Starting to get a handle on this now, I think! ;D The very informative posts have steered my in the right direction
Slowly getting up to pace
My ms external drive is a FAT32 which I understand OS X will not read from

This is the plan I'm thinking of,
Buy a 2TB external drive
Make sure it is formatted to NTFS
Transfer all my files over to the Mac with that drive

At a later stage, when all is done,
Reformat the NTFS drive to the Mac HFS+

I'm thinking that I will eventually end up with two 2TB drives that will be good insurance in case one dies, ATM, I have way too many files stored on DVDs

What do you think?

Regards,
Gary

Your plan will work as you describe. FWIW though I will say it again Macs will read and write FAT 32 drives. A second drive isn't a bad idea but you could use your existing drive.

BTW to clarify something re-reading an earlier pos. If the Mac guy meant you can't format a drive for both Mac and PC on the same drive at the same time he's wrong. It is possible to have one partition Mac and one or more partitions for PC on the same drive but it is a pain IMHO and not worth the effort.

As Sly has said many times now, OSX can READ NTFS but not write NTFS without a 3rd party driver. OSX WILL both READ and WRITE to a drive formatted in FAT32. If your external is FAT32 you are all set.

I do agree with Chas, once you copy all the data to the iMac, if you do not plan on using windows again, Format the External in Apples format.

As far as Apple programs to read Excel, Word, Power Point, like was said as long as they are not full of non standard formulas, get Pages, Numbers and Keynote from the App Store. They are $19.95 each and quite excellent applications and the price is great!

Slydude said:

Your plan will work as you describe. FWIW though I will say it again Macs will read and write FAT 32 drives. A second drive isn't a bad idea but you could use your existing drive.

BTW to clarify something re-reading an earlier pos. If the Mac guy meant you can't format a drive for both Mac and PC on the same drive at the same time he's wrong. It is possible to have one partition Mac and one or more partitions for PC on the same drive but it is a pain IMHO and not worth the effort.

Click to expand...

Tks for the info,
I'm sure a "greenhorn" like me may have misunderstood some of the mac guy's explanations, the forum help from you guys has helped me understand the difference in the drives and saved a heap of time
Regards,
Gary

Tks for the post Dennis

dtravis7 said:

As Sly has said many times now, OSX can READ NTFS but not write NTFS without a 3rd party driver. OSX WILL both READ and WRITE to a drive formatted in FAT32. If your external is FAT32 you are all set.

I do agree with Chas, once you copy all the data to the iMac, if you do not plan on using windows again, Format the External in Apples format.

As far as Apple programs to read Excel, Word, Power Point, like was said as long as they are not full of non standard formulas, get Pages, Numbers and Keynote from the App Store. They are $19.95 each and quite excellent applications and the price is great!

Click to expand...

A lot of my FAT32 files are too large and would exceed the 4gb limit, so will get a 2TB drive and make sure it is formatted to NTFS,
Get the files across,
Then I will only need a small external drive to handle the other two computers in the house,
The wife says she will not make the switch
I have a laptop on windose as well which I will use on my travels until it dies and replace with a Mac
Have decided I will load Office for Mac 2011 until I become more familiar with Mac document and spreadsheet programs, that said, my main use will be image editing software
Regards,
Gary

Sounds good. Good old FAT32 does have a single file size limit of 4GB. You must have some quite large files!

Anyway, good luck and when you get the iMac, check in here and let us know how you like it.

Also I am sure you will have more questions so feel free to ask away! We are all here to help.

Much appreciated Dennis,

Tks again,
You and the other posters here have made the preparation and research a whole lot easier
Regards,
Gary

I can understand the confusion. I've gotten incorrect information form sales people before. Particularly if there were not actually "Apple" stores and merely "Authorized" shops. Some of those are very good and strive to give correct information and others not so much.

Slydude said:

If you want to read and write to a PC drive without extra software format the drive as PAT 32. The one limitation os that no single file can be larger than 4 GB.

Click to expand...

The second limitation is that you have to be Sly to use this very cool disk format..the rest of us mere mortals are stuck with FAT 32..

Raz0rEdge said:

The second limitation is that you have to be Sly to use this very cool disk format..the rest of us mere mortals are stuck with FAT 32..

Click to expand...

Wait a minute. That's supposed to be a secret for decades yet. Where'd I put that Time Machine?