At my wits end with my Mac...

KiwiNZ said:

I too are a photographer and experienced the same issues moving my HDD's from the Windows platform. I eventually borrowed a friends TB drive and moved all my files to that drive. Formatted my drives as Mac and moved my files back. I have never looked back since and things run great.

With regards to Open Office, I tried it and did not like it .I purchased Iwork 08 and it works great

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Hmmm... that's exactly what I'm trying to do myself, but seem to be getting all these problems. I've just done a quick reinstall of OSX (keeping existing settings). Printer from OO is still driving me mad, but haven't got round to HDD copying yet. Everything's lagging behind!!!

Kind regards
Christian
www.christianhough.com

Doug b said:

Christian, are all those years of work you've done with OO saved as Oo docs or did you per chance save them as MS word docs ? If it's the former, that's going to be the painful part I'd imagine, as I know all too well. Even saving them to .doc format at this point probably won't help due to the fact that the formatting will be messed up in the transition. Is this the main problem with that part of it ? If so, I can only recommend (off the top of my head) exporting them to .pdf files and trying to work with them that way.

As for the external HD transfers.. yeah, that's a PITA for sure. I went through the same thing. Had to get a new external, format it to FAT 32 in order to get them to play nicely and then transfer all the data. Switching isn't as easy or fun as some locals make it out to be, and Apple sure doesn't care about making it easier, after they have your money. YMMV though. I personally think there was little reason for you to switch considering that you can use some great software with XP. I'd have simply downgraded if I was you. Vista sure does suck though.. that's for sure. Good luck.

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Thanks Doug. Vista was awful, but having spent all that money on a Quad 64bit processor, I was ****ed if I wasn't going to make it work! I'll have another bash at the HDD transfers, just need to find some time (and patience!).

Christian
www.christianhough.com

Sorry to hijack, but i'm a keen amateur photographers and am also thinkinh about switching to a Mac Pro, do you find that CS3 is faster on the Mac?

Christianhough, you said you just switched from a windows user to a macintosh user four weeks ago, so I am guessing your computer is still under warranty? If that's the case, please don't hesitate to give Apple a little visit so they would fix up everything for you. That's the best solution.

Don't be encouraging people to take their system in for what sounds like a software problem.

Christian, dump OO and get something, anything, else.

belunos, if you haven't realized, he just bought that computer four weeks ago. We can also realize that he is a BRAND NEW Macintosh user, so he's not really experienced to fix all the problems himself, even if they are software ones. I guess visiting Apple while still under warranty is the best solution, trust me.

Ready to throw your mac in the garden because a piece of freeware desinged for linux doesn't work well on a mac? OO is the root of the problem.

As far as installing MS Office...why? Neo Office works very well and is ported FOR APPLES, not Linux.

OO in Tiger = bad
OO in Leopard = complete and utter garbage

Yeah, I know there is a beta (which they tell you not to use for anything important...). No thanks. Neo Office works like a champ with Leopard.

I use Microsoft ONLY when absolutely forced to.

As to those having issues with external drives:
1) Delete the partition(s).
2) Create a Mac journaled partition.
3) Create another partition in fat 32 for use on windows machines.

This is what I do with external drives and it works with ZERO problems.

Don't be so quick to give up. Nothing good comes without effort and patience.

As far as the person saying "why did you switch?" or something to that effect...

MANY professionals in the entertainment / grahic design / media / scientific worlds use Apple, and for good reason. They aren't stupid. Professional tools cost more for a reason.

Computer users nowadays are SO SPOILED. Until 15 years ago or so, using a computer took time and patience to master, and it meant overcoming challenges. We live in an instant-gratification world today.

Apple store = fixed problem.

I know it cost's money, but really, Microsoft Office for mac is much, much, MUCH better. You should have zero problems with it. I use it for word, powerpoint, and occasionally excel. Works great, no complaints. (I have office 2004) 2008 is here: Office 2008 for Mac (Canada) Office 2008 for Mac (U.S.)

Phoenix Scanner said:

MANY professionals in the entertainment / grahic design / media / scientific worlds use Apple, and for good reason. They aren't stupid. Professional tools cost more for a reason.

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They use them for two reasons. One, a lot of top-end software is Mac-only. Two, it's trendy. A lot of people actually prefer to spend more simply because they have the money and it makes them feel special.

Phoenix Scanner said:

Computer users nowadays are SO SPOILED. Until 15 years ago or so, using a computer took time and patience to master, and it meant overcoming challenges. We live in an instant-gratification world today.

Click to expand...

What happened to "it just works"?

I'm sorry for you, OP. I had huge permissions problems when I moved from 10.4 to 10.5 as well, bad enough they actually drove me to switch to Windows (among many other things; that was not the primary reason). Seems like you took a leap of faith and Apple wasn't there to catch you. I'd suggest trying out TextEdit (included with OS X). Set it to "wrap to page" (instead of "wrap to window") in the preferences and you'll have a simple but still useful text editor for the time being. It's basically the Apple equivalent of WordPad.

I would agree with all of the complaints about OO. I've had nothing but trouble from it since the day I installed it, and switched to MS Office as soon as I could. I'm another pro-OpenSource fanatic, but in this case, OO has some serious problems to overcome, at least on the mac platform.

I'll be the contrarian. I tried NeoOffice. Failed in some way almost every time. hung up, caused me to have to reboot, etc, etc, etc. I went to OO, release 3.00, works perfectly. I have an iMac, 2.8 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo running OSX 10.5.6. I work in MS formats so I can move my work to and from my ThinkPad laptop using WinXP, works fine.

Just my $.02.