For an "about to be a Mac Owner", what are the essential softwares? What I am used to on a PC is Firefox, Chrome, Google Apps and Microsoft Office 07.
I am buying a couple Macs, for several reasons:
1) Mother-in-law who is constantly messing up her Dell laptop with adware and viruses
2) Two school age kids who have also been using Dell laptops in the past
3) My wife who just wants an easy to use laptop for browsing, wordprocessing, etc.
4) My sophomore college student (industrial art major) son who currently has a Mac Mini but wants something portable and uses photoshop and other graphics programs
5) I am also considering a Mac dual boot machine to "wean" myself into the world of Macs and to be able to help all of the above
So, I am looking at some very good condition Powerbook G4s - 1.67 GHZ, 10.5 OS, 80 GB HD, 2GB ram that I can purchase for $350 each. I also see that I can get 15" Macbook Pros on ebay for around $800 - $1,000.
Could I get the Powerbooks for above users 1 - 4 and a Macbook Pro for myself? Or, should I also get the Macbook Pro for my college student?
Also, for users 1 - 3 above, what are the "essential" Mac softwares to get?
In a Macbook Pro, should I try to get 6 or 8GB ram?
I know there are a plethora of questions here and I really appreciate the help!
Steve
I'm going to be like I'm working at best buy and ask lifestyle questions now... What will your Mother in law be using her computer for? Haha, well I'll try and answer anyway without knowing these things, but it'd be helpful.
1) Make sure iLife is installed on the PowerBook. All new macs come with iLife, but if the machine was a company machine, it may have been wiped off. Other than that, built in apps in the system include Mail (which is the best mail client I've ever used), Safari (fastest web browser I've ever used, even faster than Chrome), and iTunes (a bit bloated, but still a great music app). Basically, make sure it has iLife. If it doesn't, grab a copy and put it on your machines.
2) iLife! Also, friends don't let friends pay for Microsoft Office. Download the free and 100% compatible Open Office.
3) iLife, OpenOffice
4) If your son already has a mac, he's probably got an idea of what he needs to load on there and will probably do so himself.
5) Dual boot... Yea, I mean, it's nice. I think people may use it as a crutch a little too much. The real way to get to know OS X isn't to run back to windows every time you want a hug (all be it a hug from a stinky perverse uncle who just grabbed your butt). If there are some Windows apps you can't live without (well, think you can't... you really can and we're here to show you how!), then I'd suggest installing Windows in a virtual machine within Mac OS X. That way you're not going to infect one OS with viruses and whatnot, and if you do, then you can just delete the "hard drive" of your VM.
And now your RAM question... This OS isn't like Windows. I am running a 13 inch MacBook pro with 2GB of RAM right now, and really I don't need to upgrade to 4GB (which I will be doing soonish). I just want to for poops and giggles, and to free up some more RAM for other apps while I am playing World of Warcraft (god that makes me feel lame). I see all this windows hardware while working at best buy with 4-8GB of RAM in it, and the machine doesn't perform any better than my macbook with 2GB of RAM. So really, I'd say stick with 4GB. If you decide you need more later, it's WAY cheaper to buy it yourself (and will be even more so then because the price will drop with time on those bigger sticks of RAM) and it's a very very easy procedure to put RAM into a MBP.
Hope I helped a bit.