First time user questions...migrating from windows

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how do i maximise windows to touch edges left and right along with top and bottom. currently it only touches top and bottom.

how do i create a partition so as to save all my pics and videos and file on a different partition incase os X fails.

how do i have a common iphoto library to share same pics with different user accounts on my mac book

how do i let computer be active even when lid is closed. i have set the macbook to never enter sleep and also to never shut down the hdd. now when i do some time consuming tasks like copying dvd i want the task to continue even after the lid is closed. this worked with my toshiba vista laptop but in mac the action seems to have paused.
preview

is it a good idead to backup restore dvds to another set of dvds and then use the new dvds to restore the mac incase of a failure. i want to do this to avoid scratched on the original dvds. will the newly made dvds work?

what is the name of the dvd/cd burning software in mac?

how do i optimise my battery's life. like when should i keep it to charging?

MOST IMPORTANT: how do i share files with windows over a home wifi network. both my vista and mac laptops are able to use the wifi and the internet but are not able to detect each other. i have a lot of stuff to be transfered.

are the public folders in each user's folders the same or different for each user? where should i keep my shared music and pictures? in public or shared? i want that the pics and videos not get deleted incase i have to delete a user account.

Neerav
 
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i also saw that iphotos and imovies have amn option to register. are they trial softwares? when do they expire?
 
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how do i maximise windows to touch edges left and right along with top and bottom. currently it only touches top and bottom.

When you click the green expand window, it should fill the space needed. Only certain applications will fill the whole screen. However, you can manually expand the window by dragging the bottom-right corner.

how do i create a partition so as to save all my pics and videos and file on a different partition incase os X fails.

Applications --> Utilities --> Disk Utility
Although a better option might be to use Time Machine.

how do i have a common iphoto library to share same pics with different user accounts on my mac book

In the menu bar: iPhoto --> Preferences --> Sharing --> Share my photos --> Share selected albums

how do i let computer be active even when lid is closed. i have set the macbook to never enter sleep and also to never shut down the hdd. now when i do some time consuming tasks like copying dvd i want the task to continue even after the lid is closed. this worked with my toshiba vista laptop but in mac the action seems to have paused.


http://semaja2.net/insomniaxinfo/

is it a good idead to backup restore dvds to another set of dvds and then use the new dvds to restore the mac incase of a failure. i want to do this to avoid scratched on the original dvds. will the newly made dvds work?


I don't think this will work. If you have AppleCare, I'm sure they'll send you new restore dvds if they get accidentally damaged beyond use.

what is the name of the dvd/cd burning software in mac?


You can simply paste files to the CD as you would any other folder, or you can use iDVD for DVDs, or iTunes for music.

how do i optimise my battery's life. like when should i keep it to charging?


Calibrate your battery every month, but other than that, don't worry too much: just plug it in if you're near the charger.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

MOST IMPORTANT: how do i share files with windows over a home wifi network. both my vista and mac laptops are able to use the wifi and the internet but are not able to detect each other. i have a lot of stuff to be transfered.


It should just work out of the box if they use the same router, just turn on file sharing on the windows computer. You can enable this in the Network & Sharing menu in the Vista control panel.

are the public folders in each user's folders the same or different for each user? where should i keep my shared music and pictures? in public or shared? i want that the pics and videos not get deleted incase i have to delete a user account.


Shared music and pics can be handled by iPhoto and iTunes respectively.
Files in Macintosh HD --> Users --> Shared can be accessed by everyone via that folder.

i also saw that iphotos and imovies have amn option to register. are they trial softwares? when do they expire?
No, they are full versions, registration is optional.
 
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I just did the same upgrade from a pc to mac and to share things on the network you need to first have them shared on the PC then on the mac in finder click on GO at the top then at the bottom there is connect to server. That brings up a little window and you type in the name of the computer like this: smb://computername/
 
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Battery

To prolong your batteries life it's actually best to let it fully discharge and then charge it full again. otherwise you will find the batteries capacity lower over time.
 

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To prolong your batteries life it's actually best to let it fully discharge and then charge it full again. otherwise you will find the batteries capacity lower over time.

This is only true of NiCd and NiMH batteries. It is not true of the Lithium-Ion battery in the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. In fact, doing a complete discharge repeatedly will shorten the life of a Lithium-Ion battery.

http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Guidelines_for_prolonging_Li-ion_battery_life
http://www.hypercup.org/prolong-your-laptop-batterys-life-47/
http://www.techdigest.tv/2006/08/prolong_the_lif.html
 
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This is only true of NiCd and NiMH batteries. It is not true of the Lithium-Ion battery in the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. In fact, doing a complete discharge repeatedly will shorten the life of a Lithium-Ion battery.

Sorry, My bad.
 
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thanks for ur replies guys. i tried creating an alias at apple discussion forums but couldnt. i have a .mac id. when i click submit the same page loads again without telling me where i went wrong. anyhelp?

i was able to view my shared library from my bro's account in iphoto. what i want is the all pics be stores in the shared folder and iphoto of each user account point to that folder as the library. so that each user account can access the library even when the other is logged out. like i have done for the itunes music library.
 
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also,when i rename a file iphoto, the original file name doesnot change. can someone tell me which is the best photo management software for mac. i wish picasa was available for mac
 
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I am a new mac user and am trying to connect my pc to my time machine via ethernet cable so I can transfer files. I tried to connect to server in Finder but don't know my pc name. How did I get the mac to recognize my pc's hard drive?
 

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I am a new mac user and am trying to connect my pc to my time machine via ethernet cable so I can transfer files. I tried to connect to server in Finder but don't know my pc name. How did I get the mac to recognize my pc's hard drive?

You're on the right track with what you're doing. The problem is that your PC probably has a software firewall that is keeping it from being seen on the network. Make sure you disable the firewall (or better, allow File & Print sharing to pass through) and share the folders out that you want to access from your Mac.
 
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can anyone give me step by step instruction to have leopard laptop and vista laptop recognize each other on a home wifi network and also over a direct ethernet connection (from pc to macbook)
 
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a few more questions...

video:
i have a lot of avi files (episodes of friends) which i want to play in mac. quicktime said it required a plugin. now i downloaded divx. now for 'certain' files, only video is played and there is no audio. for the others there is video and audio as well. these same files played fine in k-lite media player classic on my toshiba vista laptop.
also, there is a movie i have which has been directly copied from a dvd (not ripped) it has .vob files. they played on windows but mac failes to reconize them as known file types. they dont play either with itunes, quicktime, dvd player or divx player. what to do?
is there a codec package for mac which would make quiktime play all the movie types properly and also their audio?

iphoto:
when i rename a pic in iphoto and then drag drop the pic into a folder os desktop, the new dropped file still has the original name! any advice on this...


ipreview:
what is this software?

public folder and shared folder:
what is the difference?

dashboard:
can i have dashboard widgets on my desktop like in vista?

download manager:
currently i am using speed download but its trial. which free download manager (without spyware or bots) would u recommend?

office suite:
which works best with macs? does apple has its own?

ichat:
i was able to setup gtalk on ichat thanks to the inbuilt option for using gtalk however it doesnot show the voice option of gtalk. also, how do i transfer a file via ichat?

HOW ON EARTH DO I NETWORK WITH A WINDOWS MACHINE?

xp or vista?
which version of windows is compatible with mac as a dual boot via boot camp?

please link me to a good resource for mac related knowledge
 
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Video: Try using VLC Player

Dashboard: As far as i know you can't have widgets on your desktop

Office: I use either Iwork08 or Neoofice. both are extremely capable and easy to use applications

Xp or Vista: Both are compatible with bootcamp

For the networking with the windows machine ensure that the firewall is allowing connections from the mac or turn it off and also try connecting to the server which has the name of the windows machine within finder.
 
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mid'09 MBP; 2.53GHz; 8GB RAM; OS X 10.8.2 | 2G iPod Touch 32GB | iPhone 5 iOS 7.1 16GB | iPad Air
This is only true of NiCd and NiMH batteries. It is not true of the Lithium-Ion battery in the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. In fact, doing a complete discharge repeatedly will shorten the life of a Lithium-Ion battery.

http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Guidelines_for_prolonging_Li-ion_battery_life
http://www.hypercup.org/prolong-your-laptop-batterys-life-47/
http://www.techdigest.tv/2006/08/prolong_the_lif.html
i got confused by all the links :Confused:
i avoid full discharges as often as possible, but my battery also seems to need calibration often (it keeps losing 1% power every day if i put the computer to sleep).

i also avoid using the battery actually, but while the computer is on ac power i never remove the battery.
should i?
 
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video:
i have a lot of avi files (episodes of friends) which i want to play in mac. quicktime said it required a plugin. now i downloaded divx. now for 'certain' files, only video is played and there is no audio. for the others there is video and audio as well. these same files played fine in k-lite media player classic on my toshiba vista laptop.
also, there is a movie i have which has been directly copied from a dvd (not ripped) it has .vob files. they played on windows but mac failes to reconize them as known file types. they dont play either with itunes, quicktime, dvd player or divx player. what to do?
is there a codec package for mac which would make quiktime play all the movie types properly and also their audio?


Flip4Mac might help, and VLC media player is great.


ipreview:
what is this software?

If you mean Preview it's you image viewing app. Also reads PDFs.


public folder and shared folder:
what is the difference?

Public's on the network, shared is on the computer (I think!)


dashboard:
can i have dashboard widgets on my desktop like in vista?

Not that I know of.


download manager:
currently i am using speed download but its trial. which free download manager (without spyware or bots) would u recommend?

I don't really know why you need one. You mean for just downloading files or for torrents? For torrents I recommend Transmission.


office suite:
which works best with macs? does apple has its own?

Apple has iWork, you can also get MS Office for Mac.


ichat:
i was able to setup gtalk on ichat thanks to the inbuilt option for using gtalk however it doesnot show the voice option of gtalk. also, how do i transfer a file via ichat?

Sorry, dunno about that one.


HOW ON EARTH DO I NETWORK WITH A WINDOWS MACHINE?

Dunno about that one either, haven't used Windows for a while.


xp or vista?
which version of windows is compatible with mac as a dual boot via boot camp?

Both. For XP I believe you need SP2 or above.
 
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a few more questions...

video:
i have a lot of avi files (episodes of friends) which i want to play in mac. quicktime said it required a plugin. now i downloaded divx. now for 'certain' files, only video is played and there is no audio. for the others there is video and audio as well. these same files played fine in k-lite media player classic on my toshiba vista laptop.
also, there is a movie i have which has been directly copied from a dvd (not ripped) it has .vob files. they played on windows but mac failes to reconize them as known file types. they dont play either with itunes, quicktime, dvd player or divx player. what to do?
is there a codec package for mac which would make quiktime play all the movie types properly and also their audio?

iphoto:
when i rename a pic in iphoto and then drag drop the pic into a folder os desktop, the new dropped file still has the original name! any advice on this...


ipreview:
what is this software?

public folder and shared folder:
what is the difference?

dashboard:
can i have dashboard widgets on my desktop like in vista?

download manager:
currently i am using speed download but its trial. which free download manager (without spyware or bots) would u recommend?

office suite:
which works best with macs? does apple has its own?

ichat:
i was able to setup gtalk on ichat thanks to the inbuilt option for using gtalk however it doesnot show the voice option of gtalk. also, how do i transfer a file via ichat?

HOW ON EARTH DO I NETWORK WITH A WINDOWS MACHINE?

xp or vista?
which version of windows is compatible with mac as a dual boot via boot camp?
please link me to a good resource for mac related knowledge

Although the thread is a bit old, my take:

Video:
Quicktime plugins: FlipForMac (WMVi) and Perian (most everything else)
Flip4Mac: Telestream Downloads
No need to buy anything unless you want to encode into WMV.
Perian: Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime® components

Other players:
VLC and MPlayer
(both play VOB files as far as I know)
VLC: VLC media player - Open Source Multimedia Framework and Player
MPlayer: MPlayer OSX Extended
(a better but unofficial build)

Download manager:
I use iGetter. I can't say if it is better or worse than Speed Download, it probably isn't as good, but I can use if for free, although it does give me nag screens, and I just haven't bothered trying Speed Download.
iGetter Download Manager

Office:
What else but Open Office? :)
OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite
It's Sun's attempt to loosen Microsoft's grip on the Office market, which they use to force people to use Windows (they keep some enterprise features out of the Mac version).
Never mind that the KDE project is working on a native Mac version of KOffice, its not ready and KOffice is not as good as OpenOffice.
And yes, there is of course Microsoft Office.
Apple does have iWork, but it's not so much a full-fledged Office package; it's mostly a consumer product, where Pages is MS Published on steroids, Numbers is a very nice home spreadsheet program, and Keynote is an excellent presentation program akin to Powerpoint, but nicer. I expect the latter was made because Steve Jobs needed it for his SteveNotes, and didn't want to rely on a Microsoft product.
iWork doesn't have a database, but Apple does sell separate products under the Filemaker brand: Filemaker Pro, and the more consumer-oriented Bento.
Bento Personal File Organization and Database
FileMaker Pro (database)

Instant Messaging:
I don't use iChat, so can't comment on its features. I use Adium because my contacts are all on the MSN network, which iChat deliberately doesn't support:
Adium
Current Beta:
Adium Beta
It supports most IM protocols like MSN, Yahoo, Jabber (inc. GoogleTalk), ICQ, and Oscar (AOL; also used by iChat's Mac accounts).
It is a much nicer IM in my opinion, but it doesn't currently support audio or video (hopefully soon), nor does it support sending custom emoticons as MS Messenger does (coming soon), but does display the ones sent to you.
File transfers work, but are fairly slow.
There is a native version of MS Messenger, but it doesn't have audio or video:
Microsoft Messenger for Mac
Some people use aMSN, an opensource clone, though I wouldn't recommend it yet; version 2 is under heavy development and sounds very promising:
aMSN

iPhoto:
Retitling in iPhoto doesn't change the file name. That's just how it works.

Dual booting:
Both XP and Vista is compatible with Bootcamp, and by reports, so is Windows 7.

Networking:
To get Windows machines to recognise Macs on a network, Macs pretend to be Windows NT servers, since when you're Microsoft you don't have to acknowledge the existence of anything else but Windows. Macs (and other Unix-like systems like Linux) do this with a program called Samba. Looking up Samba in the Help menu can help here, and you should find "Setting up a Mac to share files with Windows users".
On the Mac, go to System Preferences from the Apple menu, choose Sharing, and turn on File Sharing.
Click the Options button and select "Share files and folders using SMB" (SMB is the network protocol Windows uses, hence the name Samba). This turns on the Samba file server. There's a warning that this will store your password in a less secure manner to be compatible with Windows.
Select the name of accounts to share files with. If turning off file sharing later, turn off the accounts here first, else the passwords will still be stored less securely.
You may want to create a special user for sharing with Windows users for security. The user you log onto the Mac with through the network will be able to see their entire Home directory with full privileges, other accounts will only expose their Public folder by default (in your home directory; there is a Dropbox which is writable through the network, but not viewable). This may be fine in the short run for transferring files.
Note: The Shared folder on the Mac is different; it's for sharing files between users on the computer, located in the Users directory alongside other user folders: /Users/Shared whereas each account has a Public folder to share over the network. You could choose to share the Shared folder over the network though.
Click Done, name your computer something meaningful and unique, like Mac, and add folders you wish to share by clicking the +, and tweak the permissions if you desire.

On the PC, go to the Start Menu, and right-click Computer; this gives you a menu, where you choose Properties. On Vista you have to click the Advanced system settings in the list on the left. In the resultant palette, under the Computer Name tab, it shows your Workgroup and Computer Name. Click Change, and set them; the computer name must be unique, like PC, or if you have several, PC1, PC2 etc. The Workgroup name can be something like HOME, anything will do; being Windows, it is case-insensitive, one of those annoying hangovers from DOS, but I set it in all-caps just to be sure. I'm not sure if it has to be 8 characters or less, or if it can be longer.
To share a folder, right-click a folder and select Properties and select the Sharing tab, and click the Share button. If necessary add users who can access the share and click Share.
Assuming that File Sharing is on in the Network and Sharing Centre on Control Panel, the shares should now be available on the Mac, just as the Mac should be available on the PC.

On the PC, the Mac should be available from Network in Explorer or the Start menu.
On the Mac, in the Finder, you can go through the Go menu and either choose Network to browse for the share, or Connect to Server to enter the address directly: The path is in the form
smb://[computername]/[sharename]
eg if the PC is called PC1 and the share is called Documents, the path is
smb://PC1/Documents
Clicking the + will save it for future use. You can also use protocols like FTP here to mount an FTP share.
It should also show up in the Devices section of Finder windows on the side under your Mac's share name, eg Mac in the above example.
 

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