Questions regarding macbook...

I recently made the switch from PC to MAC. I now am the very proud owner of a 2006 Macbook (got it for a really good price). It has 512MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM witha 60GB hard drive (1.83GHz intel core 2 duo). I recently ordered 2GB of memory from crucial and bought a brand new 250GB hard drive at best buy (Western digital). There are a few problems that I would like to address BEFORE adding the upgrades and hope that you guys may be able to help. Here are the questions:
1) I use Webroot as an antivirus and was wondering if it is important to use such a program on the Macbook?
2) I download alot of movies and cd's and use Vuze, Community codec pack, winrar and convert. How do I get these programs onto my Macbook (got Vuze on this already) and access them at the bottom of my screen with all the rest of the icons?
3) This Macbook has a combo and therefore does not burn DVD's. Is it better to invest in an internal or external drive?
4) This is currently using Leopard but I want to upgrade to snow leopard. Do I need to do this before or after upgrading the memory?
5) The center of my keyboard has a slight (very slight but noticable) concave in it. Why?
6) I am really liking the black macbook color. Does anyone have a complete set I could buy to redo the whole Macbook in black?
I appreciate any and all help. Thank you

welcome..

2. when the program is running and icon is in the dock right-click and choose "Keep in dock"..
3. personally, i would go with internal.. just 1 rudeboy's opinion.
4. don't think it matters (Snow Leopard is only $29.99)

hope this helps somewhat.... kinda sorta new myself, i'm a returning Mac user :}

thedharmabum said:

I recently made the switch from PC to MAC. I now am the very proud owner of a 2006 Macbook (got it for a really good price). It has 512MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM witha 60GB hard drive (1.83GHz intel core 2 duo). I recently ordered 2GB of memory from crucial and bought a brand new 250GB hard drive at best buy (Western digital). There are a few problems that I would like to address BEFORE adding the upgrades and hope that you guys may be able to help. Here are the questions:
1) I use Webroot as an antivirus and was wondering if it is important to use such a program on the Macbook?
2) I download alot of movies and cd's and use Vuze, Community codec pack, winrar and convert. How do I get these programs onto my Macbook (got Vuze on this already) and access them at the bottom of my screen with all the rest of the icons?
3) This Macbook has a combo and therefore does not burn DVD's. Is it better to invest in an internal or external drive?
4) This is currently using Leopard but I want to upgrade to snow leopard. Do I need to do this before or after upgrading the memory?
5) The center of my keyboard has a slight (very slight but noticable) concave in it. Why?
6) I am really liking the black macbook color. Does anyone have a complete set I could buy to redo the whole Macbook in black?
I appreciate any and all help. Thank you

Click to expand...

I hope you are happy with your new Mac purchase, besides the quesitons you have of course.

1. There's really no point in having anti-virus on your Mac, unless you're torrenting, and even so, a firewall would suffice. I use Little Snitch as a firewall.
2. If these are Windows programs you are talking about, which I'm sure they are, you have 2 options: Use crossover to install programs like WinRAR, or get VmWare Fusion and install a virtual machine of Windows on your Mac, but that would divide up the computer's resources. I use a portable version of WinRAR in Crossover, and it works flawlessly.
3. I personally would go external, since the write speeds are so much better, the internal speeds are only 8x, my external is 24x+, and blows my Superdrive out of the water. It also would be cheaper too.
4. The new memory would work with any operating system, so there's no need to upgrade, unless you really want to. I hoenstly don't know how Leopard would run on 2 GBs of RAM, it was kind of sluggish on mine before I went to 4 GBs. I think Tiger was the OS that launched with that year.
5. Well this might be another reason why you got it for a good deal, lol. I wouldn't worry about it, unless it impedes on your typing. My computer has a few areas like that when Apple replaced a part in mine, I don't think they put it back together correctly.
6. I really don't know anything about redoing the black on the MacBook, but i know there are skins you can buy for the MacBooks.

I hope I could help, and let me know if you have any firther questions.

RE: my questions

Thank you for the answers
It just goes to show you just how incredible MAC and MAC users are

thedharmabum said:

2) I download alot of movies and cd's and use Vuze, Community codec pack, winrar and convert. How do I get these programs onto my Macbook (got Vuze on this already) and access them at the bottom of my screen with all the rest of the icons?

Click to expand...

The CCCP is pure Windows; codecs and such are handled differently (I'm not really sure how, under-the-hood, but there's no system registry in *NIX). I haven't had much face-time with my new Mac (just got it last night) so I'm not sure if the same holds true, but under Linux I found that the *NIX version of VLC Media Player works very well, even for subtitled .MKV files that the VLC-hating, Windows-using encoder has encoded specifically to make the subtitles fail on VLC/win32. If you go to videolan.org/vlc it should automatically detect your OS and pop a link to the Mac version. There's really no reason you'd ever want to run Windows Media Player classic on a Mac.

If you don't like VLC, you should be able to install mplayer on a Mac, although you might need to get the XCode Developer's Tools from Apple in order to install it (No gcc on a Mac by default).

I'm also kind of hoping there's a Mac-native media player that can handle subtitled .mkvs -- if there's one thing I learned switching from Windows to Linux it's that running a non-native application under an emulator is not going to hold a candle to using an app designed for the OS you're using.

Finally, to get an application onto your dock, just drag it from the Applications folder (which should already be on your dock, if not it's in the Macintosh HD icon) onto the dock and it should leave a persistent link. I wish the Avant Window Navigator did that.

If you're using Vuze to stream your downloaded movies to an XBox or PS3 so you can watch them on a proper TV, you might want to look to alternatives. I don't yet know what works best on Mac. Hopefully something easier than what I'm using now (MediaTomb)

thedharmabum said:

Thank you for the answers
It just goes to show you just how incredible MAC and MAC users are

Click to expand...

FWIW, the abbreviation of Macintosh is "Mac". No need to capitalize all the letters because it isn't an acronym.

It's sort of a pet peeve of the majority of us on here. ;D

Welcome to the forums and enjoy your new Mac!