Some questions from a newbie

Hello everyone,

Apologies if these questions have been asked before. I got my MacBook yesterday and am working on setting it up.

Here my questions:

What good office applications are there for Mac? (On Ubuntu I use OpenOffice)

Does OTR (off the record messaging) work with Adium?

How does Mail compare to Evolution?

Time Machine, is it a good way to back up?

Finally a non-software question:

How should I treat the battery in order to extend its life. Should I charge it up full and always use it until it dies and then repeat the process?

Thanks.

There are three Office suites available for Macs, one free, two that you have to pay for. The free one is NeoOffice, which is essentially a Mac port of OpenOffice. Then there's Apple's own iWork, and finally we have Microsoft Office.

Not sure about OTR software, perhaps somebody else can answer this part.

Never really used Evolution, but I personally prefer Thunderbird to Mail, so maybe that tells you something.

Time Machine is a good hassle free way of backing up your machine and is actually pretty versatile with incremental backups and the ability to restore from a Time Machine backup.

As for the battery, you don't really need to do anything to keep it in good shape. However, calibrating the battery once every month or so is recommended. You do this by completely draining the battery and then letting it recharge completely and not using the machine. It's a good idea to do this before you go to bed as it can then recharge overnight.

The documents that are produced using open source softwares may not be compatible with Microsoft Office which is mostly used by offices just in case you need to send something for others to use.

Thanks for the tip haios1972,

My experience with OpenOffice for example is that you can save your documents in various formats. The .doc format is currently compatible all the way up to MS Office 2003, I have yet to test it with the latest version of MSO.

If you are willing to pay something try iWork.

I've been an Office user since late 70's in all it's guises.

It's got to being 'bloatware' although, that said, it is very versatile bloatware.

I have been very impressed with iWork Pages which is quite intuitive and quite frankly a pleasure to use. The whole suite is well priced and (although personally an unknown quantity) I am told that Keynote (Mac Powerpoint - only by function) is outstanding and much superior to Powerpoint.

Sadly it's the Paradox of Freedom again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You can try iWork for free, so it's a no brainer really.

I use NeoOffice...seems to work pretty good. Never had any "compatibility" issues with it (or Open Office) and I work in a Windows shop (we develop Windows software...shudder)

Does OTR (off the record messaging) work with Adium?
Don't know the answer for that..but here is some useless info for you: I use iChat for instant messaging (jabber client works great on it and I can do video over google talk)

How does Mail compare to Evolution?
It doesn't...not even close, but Thunderbird with Lightning install works pretty good (hint: add the provider for google calendar and you can sync your google calendar both ways)

Time Machine, is it a good way to back up?
It's not the worst solution I've seen, pretty user friendly, but gzipped tarballs are still my #1

How should I treat the battery in order to extend its life. Should I charge it up full and always use it until it dies and then repeat the process?

No, you don't have to fully discharge it each time, but I would recommend cycling it on a regular basis - eg. once a month/once every 2 months, what ever blows your hair back
Cheers