15 Years Win IT Admin Buys First Mac...

Hello All,

This is my first post on Mac Forums, as up until tonight, I had never dipped my toe in mac pool. I have been a Windows Guru for many years, and make a living troubleshooting Windows Networks for large corporations, and for small businesses alike.

I have been curious about Macs for some time, and when I learned about OSX, I thought to myself, now that's the way to do it. So I have been planning on learning about Macs since then.

When the Mini Mac came out, I decided now was the time. I purchased the 1.42 with airport, and bluetooth, and I upgraded my RAM to 1GB.

Long story short...I'M LOVING IT.

After all day in front of Windows, I come home to Relax with my new mac friend. This compuer is truely a beautiful working enviornment and a pleasure to use.

MY QUESTIONS:

• I have a bluetooth mouse (microsoft) and it has a button used for going BACK in the browser (at least on PC's) is there anyway to get this fuctionality in Safari, or OSX for that matter?
• What are the killer apps to look for? I have Skype, Photoshop, Konfabulator, and Office 2004 for OSX
• What is the BEST book out there for mastering OSX? I want to know about the terminal, as that is where the true power is. The interface in OSX is so easy there really isn't much a learning curve there.
• How does one creat shortcuts/aliases...seems like sometimes I can do it, and other times I can't. This leads to how does one change the ICON of a program or alias?

Thanks for reading this...and all I can say is where has OSX been all my life?

:mac: Cheaha Out. :mac:

Cheaha said:

[*]What is the BEST book out there for mastering OSX? I want to know about the terminal, as that is where the true power is. The interface in OSX is so easy there really isn't much a learning curve there.
[/list]

Thanks for reading this...and all I can say is where has OSX been all my life?

:mac: Cheaha Out. :mac:

Click to expand...

As far as the terminal, your best book is probably going to be a unix book.
It's BSD unix, and the default shell is bash. Plenty of resources online too.

The directory structure is considerably different from most unix implementations, but it's the same basic idea, and most of the same commands. For example, open a terminal, type "top" to see the Table Of Processes.


Here's another decent guide:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/miniguide.ars

Thanks Thud.

I have a rather advance question about Mac interoperability on a Windows based network as well.

I have a NT Domain, and for some reason, even though I have the Mac setup to use the Domain controller DNS, I can't seem to resolve PC's on the local lan, for example: ping Server...doesn't resolve to ping 192.168.1.2. It just times out. Plus I have a NAS device on the network that I can't see at all from the Mac. It's not on the domain.

Any ideas on a good place to find more advanced information on gettting a Mac to play nice on a Windows network?

Cheaha said:

Thanks Thud.

I have a rather advance question about Mac interoperability on a Windows based network as well.

I have a NT Domain, and for some reason, even though I have the Mac setup to use the Domain controller DNS, I can't seem to resolve PC's on the local lan, for example: ping Server...doesn't resolve to ping 192.168.1.2. It just times out. Plus I have a NAS device on the network that I can't see at all from the Mac. It's not on the domain.

Any ideas on a good place to find more advanced information on gettting a Mac to play nice on a Windows network?

Click to expand...

You could always make your Mac the primary domain controller...
http://www.afp548.com./Articles/system/sambapdc.html

I don't know if Panther can do this though.
OSX is unix-like, but not really a true unix, so I think the additional functionality in OSX server is required...

Thud,

I PM'd you about the first link you replied with...I think that's a great article and wanted the PDF...got it?

Cheaha said:

Thud,

I PM'd you about the first link you replied with...I think that's a great article and wanted the PDF...got it?

Click to expand...

No, I'm not a premier subscriber..

I did find a book that might interest you, if you want to dig deeper into the command line interface.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lunixmacosx2/reviews.html

Mouse with Back Button

Any ideas on the mouse with the back button and Safari?

Wlecome to the world of art!

(you will learn how to be quite the creative one with all the iLife 05 has to offer.

cheers!

Umm I dont think theres a complete driver for the microsoft bluetooth mouse, my logitech mx510 just worked though, so i guess all you can do is wait till either apple or microsoft makes a driver that supports all the buttons.

)(* said:

Wlecome to the world of art!

(you will learn how to be quite the creative one with all the iLife 05 has to offer.

cheers!

Click to expand...

This is so true. Since I got my PowerBook, I've used iLife extensively for editing my photos and home movies Wonderful, wonderful software!!