I've been a PC user all my life and just bought a 2.66GHz MacBook Pro. It's great so far, but I'm a bit frusterated with the windows. in Microsoft Windows, maximizing a window means that it occupies the whole screen. When I push the green button on my Mac, however, it often just expands the window downards without having it take up the whole screen, which I want it to do. How can I fix this?
Also, I like having previews of which photos are inside a folder, which is available in Windows. Is it possible to get tiny thumbnails appearing on folders to let me know which pictures are inside?
Cheers!
I feel a bit funny saying this, since I was in your exact shoes about two summers ago, and am now on my second MacBook Pro, but... You really should get out of the "Windows" mentality. Reason being, you're only going to continue getting frustrated. And it's not because OS X does things any better or worse than Windows (well, IMO some things a LOT better and others a bit convoluted) but because it's just simply NOT Windows, and for a good reason.
First off, I'd ditch Right Zoom and download Size Up. It's much more useful than its older and no longer published brother Cinch, and it's more useful than Right Zoom. You can maximize, do half screens or do quarter screens. This is particularly useful when examining multiple directories on different levels and transferring files within them.
However, you should not JUST use either of these apps in place of OS X's native organizing features such as Exposé or spaces. They are extremely powerful features which allow a person to become quite efficient in multi-tasking, even if one is a stranger to such a concept. Trust me.
Now, as for photo previews on folders, yes. But you'll have to download
Onyx in order to enable the feature in the hidden Finder preferences which Onyx exposes. Basically Onyx references command line executions in a GUI. You'll want to use Onyx aside from that feature, anyway, as it's a great maintenance tool. Use it once a month to "repair permissions" and run basic maintenance scripts. It keeps things running squeaky clean, but please mind your computing habits as well. If you go running around zonky warez or porn sites, downloading stuff that you're not sure is totally safe, that stuff is all on you. And usually those are the things which get most Window's users in general...and why it's so easy to infiltrate a Windows machine (since it's always running as admin).
In any case, here's a shot of what you'll want to change in Onyx: In the Parameters tab, and then the Finder tab within that, you see the part which says miscellaneous options ? I've got the second button clicked. You'll want the third one clicked. That will show you contents of a folder.
Anyway, have fun and an open mind with OS X.
Doug