02-09-2007, 12:05 AM

Hey everyone,

So I thought that switching from xp (which i'm very competent at) to a mac would be quite hard, but honestly it's pretty easy. The few little questions I've had so far could be answered by using the 'mac help' in the os. So anyway, a few questions:

1. The director of the univeristy accommodation campus I'm going to be staying at in a couple of weeks sent me an email asking me for the "mac address" of my computer so that he can program the netbox and I'll have instant internet access when I arrive. Any idea on where I'd find this on my MBP? (Personally I wouldn't even know where to look on my old PC).

2. I used to use 'paint' in windows to do some image editing at the most basic level just to like, edit some 'cartoon-style' sort of bitmaps and what not for myspace, you know? What would I use to do this in Tiger? I had a look at iPhoto.. Seems complicated, lol.

3. On my mbp, if i press the f9 'expose' key nothing happens, except a little half-transparent box appears on the screen. Obviously I worked out I have to use fn + f9 to use expose. Seriously? Any way I can change this so expose works as soon as I press f9 individually, without stopping the shortcut functions of the other 'f' keys from working? What does the logo on the f9 key mean anyway, it's sort of like a half-sun icon.

Cheers.

02-09-2007, 12:13 AM

To find the MAC address, go to the Apple menu in the upper left, and select about this Mac. Then click More Info in the window that pops up.

In the new window, select the Network section. And make sure AirPort is selected at the top. Your MAC address is listed in the bottom of the list.

Edit: There is someplace in the system prefs to fix the Fn and Fkey thing. I've been trying to fine it for the past 5 minutes, and I just realized I dont have a Fn key.

The icons on the keys all represent something the speaker icon is vlume up/down and mute. the sun is screen brightness, brighter/dimmer.

02-09-2007, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by mike518

Hey everyone,

So I thought that switching from xp (which i'm very competent at) to a mac would be quite hard, but honestly it's pretty easy. The few little questions I've had so far could be answered by using the 'mac help' in the os. So anyway, a few questions:

1. The director of the univeristy accommodation campus I'm going to be staying at in a couple of weeks sent me an email asking me for the "mac address" of my computer so that he can program the netbox and I'll have instant internet access when I arrive. Any idea on where I'd find this on my MBP? (Personally I wouldn't even know where to look on my old PC).

2. I used to use 'paint' in windows to do some image editing at the most basic level just to like, edit some 'cartoon-style' sort of bitmaps and what not for myspace, you know? What would I use to do this in Tiger? I had a look at iPhoto.. Seems complicated, lol.

3. On my mbp, if i press the f9 'expose' key nothing happens, except a little half-transparent box appears on the screen. Obviously I worked out I have to use fn + f9 to use expose. Seriously? Any way I can change this so expose works as soon as I press f9 individually, without stopping the shortcut functions of the other 'f' keys from working? What does the logo on the f9 key mean anyway, it's sort of like a half-sun icon.

Cheers.

Not sure what you would use to do image editing, but I guess you can try to use gimp if you don't want to spend a lot of money, but I don't really know whether the mac version is any good. haven't used gimp in awhile.

As for the airport, ditto what the other person says. Go into System Preferences, network, and click on airport -> Configure. Your Mac address is "Airport id: ..."

In pc, you would go into the command prompt (run -> cmd) and then type ipconfig /all .

Finally in order to get expose to work, you need to press fn+f9 for it to work. However there is a work around, if you want all of your functions keys to work, (f1 as f1, not as dimmer) then if you go into system preferences, keyboard and mouse. Click on "Use the F1-F12 keys to control software features" and that should allow you just to press f9 to activate expose, and the other shortcut keys. If you want to activate the hardware (brightness, backlit keyboard etc stufff) stuff then you press FN. Most PC laptops i've had have it in this way, where to do any hardware stuff you have to press fn. As far as I know, macbooks and macbook pros have it set that the hardware (backlight keyboard) features are activated by the f1, f2, f3.. buttons and you press fn to use f1, f2, f3 ....