Little macBook Differances?

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Im a windows user and im 90% sure im going to get a macbook for univirsity. I have a few little questions.

*when switching, does it take long to get used to OSX and the keyboard?
*I notice the macbook keys are spread appart more than a normal laptop. does this cause any problems for switchers?

*Is there any form of right click, or holding down a letter and clicking that does the same sort of functions in windows like give properties, alowes you to copy, past etc? how does this work and do switchers miss this function?

*I have heared that switchers have to reformat there pendrives, hard drives etc..? Is this true and if so what format do they need to be in?
 
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Hey tobywuk,

MacBooks Rock first of all :D

I am a recent switcher... about 4.5 months now.

The OSX Experience has been great. The OS works flawlessly and very intuitive. Couldn't ask for anything better. It took me a couple of hours to get through most of the Basics and its Awesome.

Keyboard wise, well I couldn't ask for a Better keyboard. The keyboard is really Smokin'. The spacing between the keys makes it even more comfortable to use.

About the right click... IT ROCKS. With your track pad (which is the best track pad I've ever used on a laptop) you can tap with 2 fingers which will act as your Right Click. Also using two fingers on the track pad, u can scroll up & down, left & right.

About the Hard Drives... Thats the only question I don't know about. But I am pretty sure one of our fine members will have the answer to that.

Enjoy your Switching experience it will amaze you how easy it will go :D
 
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you have to enable the two-fingered right-click in System Preferences, but yes, Macs can definitely right-click.

The MB keyboard is amazing, I much prefer it over regular laptop keyboards.

USB keys (pendrives) will not need to be reformatted, they will work automatically, but larger external harddrives may need to be.
 
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VisualPurple, thanks for adding the enabling part about the two finger right click. I keep on forgetting about it :Oops: I believe my MacBook shipped with it enabled thats why!
 
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well, there are 3 common file systems for pen drives/hard drives:
NTFS: This is the Windows file system. It can be written to and read by Windows, and read by Mac OS X.
FAT32: This is the DOS file system. It can written to and read by both Windows and Mac OS X but limits file sizes to 4GB.
HFS+: This is the Mac OS X file system. It can be written to and read by Mac OS X only.

Most pen drives and hard drives will come in FAT32, and you can choose to reformat them to HFS+ should you wish in Disk Utility, which will come with your Mac, but then they will not be compatible with a Windows computer.
 
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*I have heared that switchers have to reformat there pendrives, hard drives etc..? Is this true and if so what format do they need to be in?

The poster right before pretty much covered it, but I just wanted to reiterate some things relating to pen drives and iPods just because they weren't apparent to me or my lil' sis when we first switched. With iPods, we still haven't figured out how to put songs on them with an iTunes library on a Mac and then turn around and put songs on them from an iTunes library on a PC. It seems that once you plug in your iPod (that you originally had sync'd with your iTunes library on a PC) into a mac you must reformat it to transfer music.

To go even further, once you do format the iPod for mac transferring of songs the windows computer cannot read it to transfer or even play songs. So if you are like me, mac user at home and pc user at work, you can't plug your iPod into the computer at work and listen to the songs via iTunes. This was very frustrating to me and my sister since we are constantly switching back and forth. I honestly haven't had time to search the forums for a solution to this problem yet, so this may not be an issue anymore.

As far as pen drives go, I would recommend to keep them in the windows file system because you may want to transfer some of the files to a windows computer at some point. However, if you have an external HD that you plan to use specifically for your new Mac, I recommend you format it in HFS (Mac file system) because I believe, someone correct me if I am wrong, there are performance benefits for using this system with a Mac.

Hope that answers your questions. :Smirk: Good luck.
 
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The poster right before pretty much covered it, but I just wanted to reiterate some things relating to pen drives and iPods just because they weren't apparent to me or my lil' sis when we first switched. With iPods, we still haven't figured out how to put songs on them with an iTunes library on a Mac and then turn around and put songs on them from an iTunes library on a PC. It seems that once you plug in your iPod (that you originally had sync'd with your iTunes library on a PC) into a mac you must reformat it to transfer music.

So not true.

My iPod was PC formatted, and i can play and put songs on it using my mac.
In have NOT reformatted it, and i can still use it on my friends PCs
 
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Awesome! How come I can't do that? I must be doing something totally wrong. I tried several different ways. I tried formatting on PC first. Then going to mac and trying to add songs. It said I had to reformat. Then I did on mac and went to PC and it didn't recognize the songs through iTunes. How does this work?

Is there a certain order you need to do it in to achieve both Mac and PC read/writablity?
 
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i don't think so. I just took my iPod from my PC and connected it via USB to my MBP, and it worked fine. I'm not sure what happened to yours.
 
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Darn. I am stuck at work with an iPod that can't be read from my PC when hooked up via USB.... :Shouting:
 

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