New Mac Owner

After many years of using PCs, with Windows of various flavours or Linux of various Distros, I have just bought a MacMini - my first Mac.

Of course, this is a whole new world for me. Lots of things are different.

So far, most things are working OK, I found the # key, installed an IRC client, installed Firefox3, removed one of my PCs from iTunes so the MacMini can be authorised, etc.

I even got some of my Games to work using Crossover.

One or two minor problems:

The MacMini seems less than ideal for playing Games as its Graphics chip is not that good for compatibility with Games - not much I can do there, other Macs are more than I could afford so the MacMini was the best I could do.

I can see the Shared folder of my Mac from the PC and vice versa, but I cannot login as my Windows user ID on the Mac. Any idea why not please? The ID is correct and the password (blank) is also correct. Am I forced to set a password on the PC in order to use this? Wil the PC still login automatically if I do?

Why is Cardiff the only city in the UK that the Mac knows? Have Apple never heard of Coventry or Birmingham - or even London? I live near Coventry, which is some way from Cardiff (not even the same country), so the weather here if often quite different than that in Cardiff. Can I add other locations to the Weather widget in Dashboard?

Is there any way to put different wallpapers in each pane of Spaces please? Most Distros of Linux allow that. It makes it easier to see which pane is in use - although the indicator at the top of the screen does show a small number to indicate that. Of course, Windows doesn't even have the option of virtual desktops anyway.

I read in one of the Mac magazines about refurbished Macs - which seem to be fairly reliable (and even Warrantied), but at a considerable saving. That might eventually give me a way to get a better Mac at an affordable price. How safe are they, given that they are second-hand?

Better stop there.

Good points so far - awesomely fast startup and shutdown, quiet running, seems faster than an equivalent spec PC running Windows, nice to have easy Wireless on a 'desktop', the keyboard setup (a Logitech wireless) was quick and easy and works flawlessly and I like the Dock.

We might have another 'convert' from Windows. As fast as Linux, but easier to setup and more stable.

Hi Nighthawk4 - welcome to the other side! I, like you, have been a PC-oriented person for a long time. We just got new iMacs here at home in May. They are great! Sorry to say that there is only one thing I can help you with - the weather widget. If you pull up your weather display and move your mouse pointer to the lower right corner, you'll see a little "i". Click that thing and you'll be able to change the town. It doesn't appear that they have Coventry, but they do have Birmingham, UK in the table. Of course, you do know that you need to click on your backdrop, first, so that the widgets will stay when you pull 'em up and release the mouse...

Hope that helps correct one of your issues!

welcome to the forums

are you trying to login to the mac from a PC, in that case you will need windows filesharing on and you will need to login using your mac username and password, there is no way the mac can know your windows login

No weather for Coventry, I will have to look at that, can you select birmingham?

Wallpapers, not that I know of, others may know more on that one

Refurb macs, yes you can save lots of money, and yes they are a good buy, I recently saved a colleague a few hundred quid on a macbook pro

I managed to select Coventry for the Weather, both the standard one and the BBC one. I still can't do better than London for the clock, although of course the timezone is the same so that doesn't matter. I didn't know how to edit these widgets - thanks

The odd thing is that the Dashboard seems to freeze up and then I can't edit anything. I have had to reboot several times to cure that. Any thoughts please?

For the Network problem - I am trying to login as my PC ID on the Mac. I have setup a share on the PC but all I can see is the default share on each machine.

Does anyone know if games like NWN2 or Age of Empires III will run on a MacMini please? I am talking of the Mac versions, not the PC ones in Crossover.

Amazon offer pretty good selection of Mac games, and if u search 'mac compatable games' in google, im sure you'd get a good list.

It seems that some games do work on my MacMini - Sims2, Sims2 Pets, AOE3, etc. Some of the more recent Sims2 updates don't work with the Intel Graphics chipset. The same applies to NWN2, although I think the original NWN might work.

One odd thing I have found is that the whole machine seems to slow down after a few hours. This seems to happen every night and it doesn't seem to matter what I have been running.

I am hoping to find a way to check on what processes are running to see what is using all the resources. I know you can do that in Linux and Windows - and I am sure I read somewhere how to do it on the Mac - but I can't remember where I read it.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what might be causing that please? Any known memory hogs, such as Java perhaps? Anyone else have this problem?

If so, does it only affect the MacMini - which is not that powerful anyway - or does it affect the larger Macs as well?


Separate question. Having tried the MacMini (my first ever use of a Mac apart from a couple of brief attempts way back before OS X), I think I may be hooked. I am seriously thinking of getting a decent Mac. At the moment, I am thinking of an iMac 2.66 GHz 20".

1. Is that a reasonable choice?
2. This comes by default with 2Gb of RAM. Is that enough, or is it worth going for the full 4Gb? That costs a little more - but takes 3 extra days delivery (so they can fit it I suppose).
3. This same model is available as a Refurbished item - also from Apple. Are these a safe bet or is it safer to pay the £120 or so extra for a new one? Of course, the Refurb item has only the basic 2Gb of RAM, so upgrading that does not seem to be an option.
4. Can I buy the RAM and add it myself later, or are Macs sealed up so a later upgrade would need it to be sent back to Apple?
5. I notice that the smaller iMacs have ATI graphics and the best ones have nVidia. Does that imply the nVidia is better than the ATI? All my PCs have nVidia so I am not used to the abilities of modern ATI cards. Magazine reviews generally seem to find them more or less equivalent.