worried switcher

I broke down yesterday and bought my 13" MBP. I have to say that it is true what they say about a learning curve, because I am def experiencing that now. I am looking for some reassurance here from people that have been in my shoes. I have been a PC guy since I can remember, but the mac look is a lot different it terms of manipulating things for me now. I am first seeing that the "right click" function that gets you anywhere and everywhere with a pc is lost in the mac.

Worries: I am for the most part using the computer for school, with papers and project. the school threatened me that they are a pc friendly campus, but i was reluctant and got a mac. I am stuck betweem iWork and MS Office. I have read numerous articles but i want advice from students in my position. which should I go with? I just dont know....

Also i bought the one-to-one, should i schedule an appointment just to allow them to sit down with me and show me things it may take longer for me to figure out? I am sure with enough tinkering I can figure it out, but for the time being its frustrating. All help is appreciated in advance.

the one to one might be a good idea to get you up to speed quicker.

I prefer iWork over office, with iWork you can save stuff in office format (.doc, .xls, etc...).

Just dont get frustrated once you get the hang of it youll like it more as I do and all the other switchers on this board do.

murse13 said:

I broke down yesterday and bought my 13" MBP. I have to say that it is true what they say about a learning curve, because I am def experiencing that now. I am looking for some reassurance here from people that have been in my shoes. I have been a PC guy since I can remember, but the mac look is a lot different it terms of manipulating things for me now. I am first seeing that the "right click" function that gets you anywhere and everywhere with a pc is lost in the mac.

Click to expand...

It's there in OS X too. Enable two-finger tapping for right-click, which is located in System Preferences => Trackpad.

Worries: I am for the most part using the computer for school, with papers and project. the school threatened me that they are a pc friendly campus, but i was reluctant and got a mac. I am stuck betweem iWork and MS Office. I have read numerous articles but i want advice from students in my position. which should I go with? I just dont know....

Click to expand...

I would go with Office if the school has that requirement. And remember, you can always install Windows if need be. There are several different ways to do it.

Also i bought the one-to-one, should i schedule an appointment just to allow them to sit down with me and show me things it may take longer for me to figure out? I am sure with enough tinkering I can figure it out, but for the time being its frustrating. All help is appreciated in advance.

Click to expand...

One-to-one is a good resource. I would also recommend this book, which is written in plain English and also in such a way that you won't find it to be boring:

Amazon.com: Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (9780596153281): David Pogue: Books

Just remember a modern Mac *is* a PC from a hardware standpoint. There's nothing you can do with a Windows machine that you can't do with a Mac, especially since you can run Windows if need be. Give it time and an open mind and you'll be a pro in no time.

Then if u like visual info - some good pointers here.

thanks for all of the help!

I have had my mac for a whole day now, and the right click was the first thing I missed. It is a real learning curve alright! I am learning new things all the time though and will hang in there! I don't know how to delete cookies, or user tracks, or even check to see how many I have! Hang it there, if I can, You can!

Learning a new OS is always going to be a little bit of a struggle in the beginning. I was a long time Windows/Linux user that began using a Mac about a year ago and for the first 3-4 months I kept my Linux PC around just so I had a fall back since I was finding a lot of interesting stuff on the Mac. The biggest thing was that I found every task took a lot longer because I was still figuring things out and I wasn't very efficient..

By about 6 months time I had most of the things mastered enough to start using the Mac as my primary machine, and then a year into it I completely switched by getting an i7 iMac..

So stick with it and don't get caught up in the "PC-friendly" crap..as someone who uses all 3 OS' daily..there isn't a single thing (within reason) that you can do on a PC running Windows that I can't do on a Linux machine or my Mac at home..

As far as the documents go, you'll have to stick with whatever is the established format..and if that's Office at your school, that's what you'll have to use..but since Office is available for the Mac, there should be NO reason to believe that the documents it creates are going to be somehow not compatible with Office for Windows..

Regards

murse13 said:

I broke down yesterday and bought my 13" MBP. I have to say that it is true what they say about a learning curve, because I am def experiencing that now. I am looking for some reassurance here from people that have been in my shoes. I have been a PC guy since I can remember, but the mac look is a lot different it terms of manipulating things for me now. I am first seeing that the "right click" function that gets you anywhere and everywhere with a pc is lost in the mac.

Worries: I am for the most part using the computer for school, with papers and project. the school threatened me that they are a pc friendly campus, but i was reluctant and got a mac. I am stuck betweem iWork and MS Office. I have read numerous articles but i want advice from students in my position. which should I go with? I just dont know....

Also i bought the one-to-one, should i schedule an appointment just to allow them to sit down with me and show me things it may take longer for me to figure out? I am sure with enough tinkering I can figure it out, but for the time being its frustrating. All help is appreciated in advance.

Click to expand...

Right click is not lost. You can either hold control and click, or turn on tap to click and set "two finger right click" in the trackpad preference pane.

One to one is good. You can get through college with OpenOffice. I certainly did. Though, MS Office is nice (2011 beta was anyway, 08 is kind of a pain). iWork is nice too. OpenOffice is free though, and does everything a student needs it to.

I like iWork better than Microsoft office, I have both and I find that if i need to share the papers with other students or print them at school I type them with office, But if the paper is only going to be printed off my home printer i do it in iWork. So for school i would say go with office...Or try them both you can download the trial versions of both and give them a try.

olderandwiser said:

I have had my mac for a whole day now, and the right click was the first thing I missed. It is a real learning curve alright! I am learning new things all the time though and will hang in there! I don't know how to delete cookies, or user tracks, or even check to see how many I have! Hang it there, if I can, You can!

Click to expand...

- Right click hasn't gone anywhere. It's there, it's just not a physical button. The trackpad on Mac laptops can be set to two-finger right-click. In fact right-click has "been there" in the OS since before Apple started selling their own two-button mice.

- Cookies in Safari? Click 'Safari' at the top, Preferences, Security, Show Cookies, Remove All.

I'm 3 months into my iMac and still learning, but comfortable with OS X. I'm sure after I get a year under my belt, I'll be even more so. With 30 years of MS frustrations, I decided to go whole hog and forget I ever knew Windows. I also switched to iWork and am learning new ways to do what I used to do on my PC. And I love it!!! Not bad for an old man.

Bullwinkle said:

I'm 3 months into my iMac and still learning, but comfortable with OS X. I'm sure after I get a year under my belt, I'll be even more so. With 30 years of MS frustrations, I decided to go whole hog and forget I ever knew Windows. I also switched to iWork and am learning new ways to do what I used to do on my PC. And I love it!!! Not bad for an old man.

Click to expand...

That's the way to do it. Really, it is. If you're constantly comparing the two, you'll drive yourself nuts.

I've been a "switcher" (I still administer a Microsoft network in my professional life) for 3 years now and I can't tell you how frustrated I get with Windows at times now. When I'm working on my Mac, seldom do I have to wait for anything and that's just not the case on my Windows machines. It's made me so impatient in my work life.

And in that time, I have only found one place where OS X really cedes ground to Windows, and that's in how it handles printers (specifically networked printers). I keep hoping that Apple will some day fix it on a subsequent release, but so far it's been pretty stagnant.

cwa107 said:

CLIP...

And in that time, I have only found one place where OS X really cedes ground to Windows, and that's in how it handles printers (specifically networked printers). I keep hoping that Apple will some day fix it on a subsequent release, but so far it's been pretty stagnant.

Click to expand...

I found that it was pretty easy to network my printers. I set them up with an IP, they were discovered o the network by OSX and pretty much everything works. I can scan, print and fax, all from my iMac. It was much harder to do all the setup on my wife's business PC.

jakerich said:

I found that it was pretty easy to network my printers. I set them up with an IP, they were discovered o the network by OSX and pretty much everything works. I can scan, print and fax, all from my iMac. It was much harder to do all the setup on my wife's business PC.

Click to expand...

Try doing it with a printer attached to an external print server. On Windows, it's just a matter of switching ports. On OS X, you're SOL unless you happen to be able to use a Gutenprint driver.

This will eventually be negated by the majority of mainstream printers having network capability built right in. But there's still a lot of USB only printers out there, many of which are being shared from another machine (and in many cases, it's a Windows machine, which adds a degree of complexity).

Bullwinkle said:

I'm 3 months into my iMac and still learning, but comfortable with OS X. I'm sure after I get a year under my belt, I'll be even more so. With 30 years of MS frustrations, I decided to go whole hog and forget I ever knew Windows. I also switched to iWork and am learning new ways to do what I used to do on my PC. And I love it!!! Not bad for an old man.

Click to expand...

Fair play to you mate, thats the only way we have to do it

cwa107 said:

CLIP... But there's still a lot of USB only printers out there, many of which are being shared from another machine (and in many cases, it's a Windows machine, which adds a degree of complexity).

Click to expand...

Ah, there's the problem. I find sharing resources dead simple on OSX, brutally difficult on Windows. On OSX, you open System Preferences, enable sharing for what you want to share and it's pretty much done. No fiddling with tricky settings, no getting half share, half blocked.

I switched to Mac about 2 years ago now, and have never looked back! Life is a lot simpler!

I am also a student, and use both MS Office and iWork. I bought MS Office a few weeks ago because I found that when you complete your assignment on iWork and then open the document on a Windows PC with MS Office, the fonts get mixed up and the writing/pictures are all over the place. I don't know whether it's something I'm doing wrong or... but anyway.

I find MS Office is better if you're going to be switching between college PCs and your Mac at home to do your work. However, if you are going to be taking your MBP to school then iWork is the best option. It does everything MS Office does, only more.

Age is no bar to making a switch.

I'm 69 and with perseverance am already getting to grips with Mac after being a PC user for over 10 years.

The help I've received form Applecare has been fantastic although I had to sort out a hiccough with installing Windows myself 'cos the mouse woudn't work and indeed still fails occasionally when I switch. I had to have it as a number of peripherals, scanner for example, aren't supported for Mac use.

The bootcamp manual is essential reading before you make a start to partitioning the drive to install Windows.

I admit that I would like to have MS Office. Students are at a big advantage here as they don't have to pay an arm and a leg to get MS Office for Mac.

I'd be quite happy to have the Mac version of my 2003 Office but can't find it available anywhere.

Alwyn said:

I admit that I would like to have MS Office. Students are at a big advantage here as they don't have to pay an arm and a leg to get MS Office for Mac.

I'd be quite happy to have the Mac version of my 2003 Office but can't find it available anywhere.

Click to expand...

Try Open Office
It's free, and it opens all MS Office documents.

@murse13:

I've switched from Windows to a MacBook Pro 13 over the past 2 months, and it's been a rather pleasant experience.

As many of the replies here have already pointed out, right-click functionality is there, so I guess that issue is solved.

I personally have found that OSX does more or less everything that I usually do in Windows, just that it might have a different way of doing it.

In the end, I guess you always have the option of falling back to Boot Camp to install Windows if you really encounter a shop stopper. I personally use Windows XP running in Parallel (virtual) to run a custom Windows program for work, but the moment I finish my work, I shut the virtual machine down.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Kinson.