Newbie questions, please can you help me decide

Total newbie questions to help me switch

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Ok you have heard this all before but please hear me out, I am sick to death of Windows becuase of viruses, been running Windows 2000 for less than 2 months and it has already screwed up and I am also sick to death of Linux due to Macormedias lack of support shipping Dreamweaver over to Linux which now leaves me with no choice but to seriously look at a mac.

If you could answer some of my questions it would be greatly appreciated.

I am on a tight budget, I could possibly afford a base unit off of ebay, can I get an adaptor so I can plug the base unit in to my existing 19" monitor?

I need to run Dreamweaver and Photoshop, performance wise what is the minumium spec I would require not to have any problems running both these applications like I did on a Windows machine with 1gb of Ram?

The apple OS, is it easy to reinstall if something goes wrong, is it just the case of popping in your cd or dvd and reinstalling like you do with Windows and Linux?

Adding peripherals, If I went out and bought an external dvd burner would this work, would I have any compatability problems?

Internet explorer, Ok on my Windows box I preview pages produced in Dreamweaver using Internet Explorer, is this the same on a Mac, and are there any major differences between IE on windows and IE on Mac?

Viruses, what is the situation like and If I bought a Mac would I get treated to spyware and viruses after a couple of days usage?

Thank you to anyone that helps

Makes me wonder why I bothered posting. Its true Apple people are truly stuck up.

adrian29uk said:

Total newbie questions to help me switch

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok you have heard this all before but please hear me out, I am sick to death of Windows becuase of viruses, been running Windows 2000 for less than 2 months and it has already screwed up and I am also sick to death of Linux due to Macormedias lack of support shipping Dreamweaver over to Linux which now leaves me with no choice but to seriously look at a mac.

If you could answer some of my questions it would be greatly appreciated.

I am on a tight budget, I could possibly afford a base unit off of ebay, can I get an adaptor so I can plug the base unit in to my existing 19" monitor?

I need to run Dreamweaver and Photoshop, performance wise what is the minumium spec I would require not to have any problems running both these applications like I did on a Windows machine with 1gb of Ram?

The apple OS, is it easy to reinstall if something goes wrong, is it just the case of popping in your cd or dvd and reinstalling like you do with Windows and Linux?

Adding peripherals, If I went out and bought an external dvd burner would this work, would I have any compatability problems?

Internet explorer, Ok on my Windows box I preview pages produced in Dreamweaver using Internet Explorer, is this the same on a Mac, and are there any major differences between IE on windows and IE on Mac?

Viruses, what is the situation like and If I bought a Mac would I get treated to spyware and viruses after a couple of days usage?

Thank you to anyone that helps

Click to expand...

adrian29uk said:

Makes me wonder why I bothered posting. Its true Apple people are truly stuck up.

Click to expand...

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adrian29uk said:

Click to expand...

First of all, buddy, take it easy. I don't know if you think Apple users have an over-abundance of free time or what, but you asked a lot of questions, and not everyone can just sit down and take the time to give a lot of answers.

Lucky for you, I'm in an English class that makes me hate life.

1. You should be able to buy a VGA to DVI adaptor to connect any existing monitors to a base unit (assuming you're buying a powermac as all other apple systems come with built in monitors... if you're talking about multiple monitors, you should be able to do that, too).

2. Personally I'm not exactly sure what you'd need for those programs to run well... I'd say minimum would be a 1ghz processor with 512mb of ram, but that would be the very minimum. You'd probably be more comfortable with a 1.33ghz processor and 1gb of ram. But Like I said, I'm not totally sure, so if anyone else knows better, correct me.

3. MacOSX is unlike Windows in many ways. One of these is that you pretty much never have to do a "reinstall" of the OS. It's much more stable than Windows and system files don't have that nasty habit of corrupting like they do in Windows.

4. Almost all peripherals will work, unless they are really old.

5. You can use either Safari or IE:mac for previewing pages, just as you would on a PC.

6. Viruses and spyware: Spyware for a Mac does not exist. Period. Viruses are rare, but I would recommend getting a copy of Norton anyway. You can't be too safe.

I have had my PowerBook for three months, and I am totally happy. My printer and wireless remote worked perfectly with my new mac, I've never had a virus, and I've only had to force quit (the mac equivalent of doing a ctrl+alt+del > end task) two or three times. I've only shut down my powerbook twice (mac has a superlative sleep mode).

I hope that answers most of your questions.