At my wits end with my Mac...

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Hello everyone...

My first post and I guess not the greatest start to joining the forum. I'm a photographer and moved to Mac about 4 weeks ago after years using and building PC's. Partly because I got sick of hearing clients say; 'do you not use Mac?', but mainly because I found Vista 64 unbearable and unreliable.

Sadly, I'm finding my Mac to be no better and am beginning to wish I stayed on PC as the transfer to Mac cost me double the money. I always assumed Mac did exactly what it said on the tin... meaning, it worked. Hmmm...:eek:

I'm here to seek resolution to a few problems, so I do hope someone can help and maybe my experience will get better.

This evening I has taken me 2.5 hours to type a small letter. All I wanted to do is send a letter to a picture editor. Here;s what's happening...
I'll start Open Office (which I've just input my years accounts on) and type a letter. Nope, wont work (times out). Reinstalled, still wont open (cursor just looks busy but doesn't do anything). Reinstalled the latest version of X11 to run with Leopard, tried starting one before the other... no joy. Downloaded and installed a script to do with font compatibility of the web and X11. Still nothing.

Eventually, I decided to reboot the machine, but it wouldn't do this via the menu, so I had to turn off the power. When I reboot Open Office worked, so I typed my letter. But now it wouldn't print. Despite setting everything to the A4 paper size, the printer was telling me the paper was too small (HP9180). This has never happened before, so I'm assuming its the Mac. I minimised the OO window and took a look at the printer settings, which were fine. Guess what, I now cannot maximise the OO window containing my letter. I click on the OO icon in the dock and it does nothing.:'(

Can somebody help me before I throw this expensive paper weight into the garden!!!???

I've had other similar problems. I use a program called Focus by Hasselblad to convert my RAW images. For some reason, it wouldn't allow me to save files and then kept closing Focus due to an 'unexpected error'.

More stuff... I know I'm going on, but I need to get this working (and off my chest)!!!:Shouting:

I purchased a Maxtor external 1TB HDD (I have several 500gb HDD's and have to put some of my SATA drives from the PC into the MAC. Due to the PC drive format, I'm unable to write to the ex-PC HDD"s, so have been trying to copy the files over to the new external 1TB drive so I can format them. The message I'm getting... 'insufficient privilages'. I've formatted the external 1TB as FAT and Mac (after more problems trying to format as Mac) and get the same message. I get the same message when trying to copy bulk files from one external drive to another. I'm the administrator and the only user of the Mac.

Please can somebody help, as I just don't have time for this and its beginning to affect my business as I can't get the basics done. As I've moved my software licenses over to Mac and bought a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro, I'm more or less committed and fast becoming frustrated with the experience.

Cheers
Christian
www.christianhough.com
 
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This problem is very odd. Perhaps there's a corrupt file in the software? I honestly don't really know why this is happening. Everything that you mentioned works for me.
 
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have you tried all the normal osx troubleshooting procedures?
 
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If worse comes to worse, and you really need to restore your Mac and try again.
 
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Its not often I say this - I love open source to bits and regularly sing praises of all things "Free"

In my opinion, open office is a pile of garbage - it virtually killed my 8 core mac pro the other day, constant freezing, refusing to type letters and numbers and bizarre unstoppable scrolling.

Bear in mind this is the older, stable version of open office made for Leopard - which should therefore work fine.

MS Office is a far superior option for word processing on the mac - OO sucks badly. The only reason I got it was so that csv files were formatting properly for oscommerce.
 
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Once again, a Microsoft product ruins another computer. You're much better off with iWork.
 
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I agree with alexmaccoll about OpenOffice. It's just not good on the Mac. Having it run in X11 just slows everything down, not to mention the fact that MS Office is flat-out better designed. I love plenty of open source programs, but OOo on the Mac isn't one of them. I know someone in this thread is eventually going to recommend NeoOffice, but my vote stays with MS Office all the way.

As for Focus, I'm unfamiliar with the program. I'm also not sure if Apple's own Aperture would be able to give you the functionality that you need. Maybe someone else can chime in here.

The external HDD is kinda puzzling. It may have something to do with the former PC HDDs, but I can't be sure. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
 
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Once again, a Microsoft product ruins another computer. You're much better off with iWork.

He's not having a problem with any Microsoft product. OpenOffice.org is an open source office suite created as a competitor to Microsoft Office.

While I'm not discounting the niceness of iWork, I do think that the cynicism towards Microsoft here is unwarranted. Many of Microsoft's products work quite well and are nicely designed. Exhibit A: MS Office for Mac.

Let's try to have constructive conversation here.
 
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I hate it when people say macs suck just because they cant figure out how to use it correctly. Open office sucks. Thats your problem. Invest some money in iWork or microsoft office. If you're too poor, use torrents and get it for free. Bur seriously don't base your opinion of macs from crappy freeware.
 
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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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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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As was stated Open Office is absolutely horrible on the mac. Might as well purchase one of the quality word processing apps. I think 2.5 hours of your life being frustrated is worth the $80 for iWork or the $200 for MS Office.

I don't know what Focus so I can't help you, but if you're looking for RAW support Lightroom and Aperture are both great apps that support RAW images as well as mild editing and saving the images in a different format. Also with Automator and those applications you can have the computer convert a large amount of RAW files for you.

As for copying your files. If you are having problems you can bring your drives to the apple store. The Genius will do it for you for free.
 
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As a recent switcher to Mac, I sympathize with your problems. I haven't had nearly so many or serious issues as you and I am thinking of returning to MS.
Having said that, I want to stay with Mac, so I persist.
Your problem with Open Office. Have you tried Neo Office instead? Works great for me.

N
 
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Don't use Open Office on a mac. If you want to use their product use Neo Office. It is Open Office written for the mac whereas Open office is written for linux.

You won't have to mess with X11 this way either.
 
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Open office definatel no good for mac.I'vr downloaded and installed it a few times and it always crashes on startup. But I use NeoOffice a derivative of Open office and it works fine.

eggman
 
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Are you guys clueless?

http://www.openoffice.org/

Get the OpenOffice 3-RC2. I think the final version will be released on the 24th of September. Version 3 has an Aqua version, so X11 is not required. I've been using it since Beta 1 back in June, and it's never caused me problems.

Also, OpenOffice is every bit as good as MS Office, if not better because of the lack of cost.
 
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have you tried all the normal osx troubleshooting procedures?

Dunno, what are the trouble shooting procedures!!!??? I've just done a fresh re-install of OSX, but retained the former settings. I'm still getting odd quirks from OO, especially with the printer. I'm wondering if OO is part of my problem.


Cheers
Christian
www.christianhough.com
 
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Its not often I say this - I love open source to bits and regularly sing praises of all things "Free"

In my opinion, open office is a pile of garbage - it virtually killed my 8 core mac pro the other day, constant freezing, refusing to type letters and numbers and bizarre unstoppable scrolling.

Bear in mind this is the older, stable version of open office made for Leopard - which should therefore work fine.

MS Office is a far superior option for word processing on the mac - OO sucks badly. The only reason I got it was so that csv files were formatting properly for oscommerce.

I only have the Quad core 2.8 with 8gb, but this should be more than enough to run a word processor! It certainly does slow things down. The cost of MS Office is too expensive, especially when I only want a word processor and spreadsheet. I'll have a look at iWorks.

Kind regards
Christian
www.christianhough.com
 
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I hate it when people say macs suck just because they cant figure out how to use it correctly. Open office sucks. Thats your problem. Invest some money in iWork or microsoft office. If you're too poor, use torrents and get it for free. Bur seriously don't base your opinion of macs from crappy freeware.

I never said that Macs suck. I hate it when people jump to conclusions!!!

Christian
www.christianhough.com
 
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As was stated Open Office is absolutely horrible on the mac. Might as well purchase one of the quality word processing apps. I think 2.5 hours of your life being frustrated is worth the $80 for iWork or the $200 for MS Office.

I don't know what Focus so I can't help you, but if you're looking for RAW support Lightroom and Aperture are both great apps that support RAW images as well as mild editing and saving the images in a different format. Also with Automator and those applications you can have the computer convert a large amount of RAW files for you.

As for copying your files. If you are having problems you can bring your drives to the apple store. The Genius will do it for you for free.

Thanks for your reply. I'll look at iWork. I don't need it to be all singing and all dancing!

I've looked at the Aperture trial, but not sure it's for me. Lightroom is cool, but these apps are mainly for quick editing and mass converting. I'll probably edit around 6-10 images from a shoot. Focus is designed specifically for the Hasselblad digital and does a similar job, but has some of the Hassie bespoke corrections built in for the H3D. I only process RAW and then edit the rest in CS3.

Many thanks

Regards
Christian
www.christianhough.com
 

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