pull me into the lifeboat guys

C

cembrowicz

Guest
have just bought my first iMac....a new culture dawns after all those PC crashes. Some questions:
1. Do I just give up trying to make my AOL Broadband connection work here in the UK? Folk tell me it can be done by downloading the right driver for my BT Vohager USB Modem,(AOL deny this) though maybe I shouldnt cling toAOL anfd my old address.....any suggestions for a better uk BB provider? I suppose I would want to do emails straight out of my diary/address book - transferred from Outlook - and use my Palm pilot to synchronise diaries.
2. Have bought and read Mac osx for Dummies - helpful but not quite as intuitive as Id have liked and it will take time to get into the fine points. Any brief insights or must-do short cuts on the quickest way to get used to switching from W98?
all offers of advice gratefully received
cembro
 
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Well I hear ADSL in the UK is pretty nice... maybe look into one of those.

Just spend time with your mac, and explore it! you will learn more about it in a week than you knew about windows in a year.
 
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hokiethang

Guest
cembrowicz said:
thanks - research in progress

And if you have any questions, feel free to drop by here and ask them of us. A number of us have been using macs for a while and can help you out for your question #2. I cant really help with the first one since I live in the US and have an ethernet based cable modem.
 
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D

dantesflame

Guest
cembrowicz said:
have just bought my first iMac....a new culture dawns after all those PC crashes. Some questions:
1. Do I just give up trying to make my AOL Broadband connection work here in the UK? Folk tell me it can be done by downloading the right driver for my BT Vohager USB Modem,(AOL deny this) though maybe I shouldnt cling toAOL anfd my old address.....any suggestions for a better uk BB provider? I suppose I would want to do emails straight out of my diary/address book - transferred from Outlook - and use my Palm pilot to synchronise diaries.
2. Have bought and read Mac osx for Dummies - helpful but not quite as intuitive as Id have liked and it will take time to get into the fine points. Any brief insights or must-do short cuts on the quickest way to get used to switching from W98?
all offers of advice gratefully received
cembro
This is something I am also following at the moment, your probably already aware of this BT site that now provides Mac drivers for the voyager 100, but just in case your not here it is:-

[dead link removed]

Doubt that this will help with the AOL thing at the moment (did ask AOL Broadband team about a week ago if they were going to provide for Mac but as yet they haven't replied) but as the voyager 100 seems to be a nice piece of kit it may just help you get some more service out of it with an alternative provider if necessary. Good luck and please post if you manage a workaround that gets you AOL broadband in the UK on your Mac. Cheers :)
 
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Pwnt
To answer your second question, once you are familiar with the basics of OSX, I suggest you learn a few terminal commands; they can come in really useful. Also, (you may already know the following - they are what I consider essential commands) - Apple-Q is the equivalent of Alt-F4, Apple-Tab = Alt-Tab, and Apple-P = Print. Also if you have panther, exposé is awesome (F9-F11 keys).

These are more personal preferences, but they may help you out a bit:
Download Konfabulator, it's really useful and fun.
Control or right-click on the toolbar in finder and drag the 'path' item to the active toolbar - I find that immensely useful since I use aliases and the sidebar links often and need to navigate within the folder heirachy, not back through the folders I've already visited.
If you have a notebook and no mouse (which I've just realised you dont, but for anybody else I'll say it anyway), SideTrack is really useful (do a search on versiontracker.com) - it allows you to assign a part of the trackpad to scrolling.
 
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cembrowicz

Guest
Thanks, hitting f9 -11 has been best tip - amazing!
Im told that buying a new a router will serve me better than an ADSL modem for a broadband connection - uses ethernet port and more adaptable to any provider - and I can even use up my AOL subscription til it runs out (lots of conflicting advice on this subject over here)
Stefan
 
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kakosc

Guest
Give up AOL.. AOL users are the laughing stock of the internet, and if they're too crap to give you help for your mac then it just shows that they're focused towards the PC loving, surburbia dwelling nuclear families where everything is perfect. ie nice appearence, very, very ugly underlayer.
You live in Britain and your stuck with broadband providers? either I'm hugly mistaken or Britain has the best uptake with new technologies like broadband and satellite tv. eh.
there was a book i was eyeing off, but didnt end up getting, i wish i could remember its name.. erm.. look im sure there's no shortage, as long as its not for idiots or fwits or whatever name they chose to use they should teach you alot.
Another important key combination, one which took me a few months of searching to find.. ctrl+shift+3 will (in jaguar, not sure about panther) put a screenshot in pdf format on your desktop, named 'picture 1, 2, 3, blah blah'
ctrl+shift+4 will turn your cursor into a cross, and you drag over the area you want to capture.. clicking will save a pdf to your desktop with the same name as above. Find Grab in your utilties folder (along with so many other goodies) in applications folder if you want to have a bit more control over your screenshotting.
Download konfabulator, really good peice of software that, and your mac file sharing program is Limewire, available at www.limewire.com the mac version doesnt include any spyware.. get 3.4.4 if possible, anything after that is incredibly unstable, from my experiences anyway. If you want to try for yourself, you can have 3.4.4 on your system as well as the latest one if you want, they operate independantly of each other and upgrading doesnt delete or mess with your old version.
**just looks at date of other posts** oh sorry, ****, maybe my ramblings will be helpful for someone else.
 
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kakosc

Guest
**** that crappy american date format (mm/dd/yyyy) always gets me.
So this thread ISNT 9 months old.. i was wondering how you got panther.. ive had a big day, exuse me
 
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kakosc

Guest
something i forgot to mention..
yes, a pdf screenshot will take around 15 minutes to download on a dial up connection, so you can open it in preview, click export... and chose whatever format you fancy instead of the paint save as... feature in windows.
 
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Kreza

Guest
its true, give up AOL, the are the laughing stock of the internet, not to mention the intrusive software, atrocious speeds and terrible pings in games. I use ZEN ADSL. They are a UK based provider that give ADSL for £27.99, the thing is the speeds are great, connection quality is brillaint and the customer support cannot be touched by AOL, They were voted Number 1 UK ADSL Provider so I suggest looking into them (dead link removed) I think it is. Alternatively if you are looking for a cheap ISP then I heard there is a company in the UK called Pipex, which offers ADSL for £23!!
 
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24"iMac, 15"MB-Pro, MacBook, G4 iMac, PM G5 2x2Ghz, G4 iBook & Some PCs
I use NTL Broadband and so far no problems of note.

Now they do a modem variety so you don't have to buy the set top box either.

I pay £25.99 per month for 600Kbps btw.

Amen-Moses
 
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jonnyturner

Guest
pipex.net 512 service for 23 p/m or 34 for a 1meg line. (thats what i use)

never had a single problem with them, but if its ping youre after then always go with ethernet modems as oposed to USB
 

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