02-24-2008, 01:59 PM

I bought my Macbook pro last weekend and have been getting familer with it all week. I had a Mac years ago, I mean y e a r s ago, but I ended up with a PC, I wasn't able to keep both the PC and Mac upgraded and all so I ended up putting my money into the PC, as that was the most cost effective way to go at the time. I always wanted to go back to Mac, but I was so heavely invested in the PC, that I couldn't make the switch. I'm a photographer and when the Vista system came out and there was so much buzzz about staying away from Vista, I began thinking about a Mac again. I needed a new laptop, so I went ahead and got this Macbook Pro, I love it!!!. but now I need to get it all dialed in. I'm so glad I found this forum ! One of my first questions ( there will probably be a ton ) is about the Mail, and Safari. they look really interesting.. right now (on my PC) I use MSN. and I'd like to get away from that.. Do any of you use these programs? what about .Mac, is it worth my money to join that?
Thanks
Barb Parker

02-24-2008, 02:05 PM

I'm awaiting my MacBook (shipped Friday) and am on a Vista machine right now. I've had my share of problems with Windows machines in the past but never as much as I've had with this thing and it's only 3 months old. I am planning on selling this catastrophe as soon as my switch is complete some time later this week. So, yeah, I'm with ya! I'm done with Windows by this time next week.

02-24-2008, 02:54 PM

Well you probably know that Safari is the web page browser of Mac, there are some pages that aren't supported, but I've only ran across a few of those, and a simple fix is just downloading Firefox. Mail is a bit confusing at first because, at least it was for me, to tie in an external email account, ie yahoo or gmail but once you figure that out your set.

As for .mac it comes with a 30 day trial, might be 60 day but i'm not sure, and you an see if you like it off of that, personally i don't have a use for it so once my account runs out on my mbp i'm just going to forget about it.

Congrats on both of your guys purchases!

02-24-2008, 03:01 PM

Mail is great for merging all your email accounts and supports a variety of accounts as long as you know the info, although I am not sure that it works with MSN though. And Safari is a pretty good web browser, I enjoy it since it is integrated with the OS pretty well.

02-24-2008, 03:18 PM

Thanks for the information. I did look at the mail and it does say that I can include my MSN account, but I have to get some information.....and I don't know how to get that...I'm going to have to dig deeper. Does anyone use Lightroom and or PSCS3 ? I have loaded Lightroom, but PS is a problem...I have the PC version, so I have to buy the Mac version.. which is another 680.00 or so....Yikes!!!
Barb

02-24-2008, 03:21 PM

Welcome to Mac-Forums, photobarb.

About having to pay full price another PS licence for Mac... No, not really. Adobe has an offer for a cross-grade from WinBox to Mac.

02-24-2008, 03:30 PM

Thank you so much for that information... I read the link that you gave me and I will check into that tomorrow...Its good to know, as I was worried about having to buy CS.....
Barb

02-24-2008, 03:43 PM

Glad you find it useful.

Oh and welcome back to the Mac.

02-24-2008, 03:45 PM

Welcome to Mac Forums and to your return to the Mac. If we can help in any way, let us know!


...Dennis

02-24-2008, 03:47 PM

Originally Posted by dtravis7

Welcome to Mac Forums and to your return to the Mac. If we can help in any way, let us know!

What s/he said.

02-24-2008, 04:02 PM

I recently upgraded and cross-platformed from PC CS2 to Mac CS3 for about $220 including tax and shipping. For that, I got the full install CD, which is a good deal.

As for .mac, I think it's intriguing given how seemlessly integrated it appears to be with Apple products and Aperture. However, you are limited to 10GB of storage space, and it costs $100 a year. By comparison, my smugmug account provides unlimited storage capacity and only costs $40 a year. I really like the layout and the controls available with smugmug. On the other hand, .mac allows for video uploads, which smugmug does not.

While I'm a Lightroom user and fan, you may want to take a look at Apple's comparable Aperture 2, which was just released. If not for the fact that I've got a fairly large catalog of images already edited in LR, I would have considered Aperture.

02-24-2008, 04:42 PM

Good thought on the Lightroom/Aperture idea... I have never given Aperture a thought.. but maybe I'll give that a look. I have been using lightroom on my PC for over a year, so I have lots of images in my catalog....The lightroom that I have loaded on my Mac has nothing on it...can I intagrate the two?
( maybe this isn't the right forum for this subject...do I need to move it?)

02-25-2008, 07:36 AM

Originally Posted by photobarb

The lightroom that I have loaded on my Mac has nothing on it...can I intagrate the two?

You sure can. The beauty of the Mac is that it can read (although not write to) data saved to the PC's FAT32 or NTFS volumes. Just connect your external drive, or slip in your CD/DVD, containing the images and the LR settings, and import them all into LR on your Mac. Simple as that!