Mac Noob Alert!

What's up community!

I'm a total Mac noob, just started up my second hand mini mac still on Tiger (10.4.11)!

I'm trying to get to know how it works so I'm trying to ditch my win 7 laptop at work and jump feet first into this Apple lark

My question is, what's the best way to get started finding out how this thing works? Quite a stupid question in reality but I'm a Xerox analyst so I've messed around with printers, as my calling suggests, but i could do with a word processor and an email client if I'm to rely on my mac.

Any suggestions for good software? Is there a word processor in this thing? Is the mail client good enough or would you suggest a third party one?

Most importantly: What cool gadgets does this baby have

Thanks guys, I'll try not to clog up the site with annoying noob questions !

Thanks again

Does it have Pages installed? There is Word for Mac available also.

I don't use Apple's Mail (just internet based e-mail) but many do and it works just fine for them. It's an individual preference.

I went to OSX on my Dell XPS about a year ago and thought same.. *** does this all do... about a week ago my Macbook pro arrived

Stick with it. Deffo worth the switch. Although I still consider myself a newb on Mac. (I only found out about cmd-shift-4 this week!)

Play with settings app for a little, and then forget about it.. it will all just work.

Apps wise.. hrm.
Safari is grand for www, never needed anything else.
try to work out finder,
look at terminal - gives you proper shell access, especially if you want to look under the hood.
If you need word processor spreadsheet etc.. MS Office for Mac is pretty good to help with transition.
I use apple mail, but could do outlook if I fancied it.

Enjoy.

There's a built in word processor called TextEdit. Basic, but quite good.

For $20, there's Pages. Love it, but it's not like MS Word and requires attitude adjustment.

There's MS Office for Mac, and the (IMO fugly) open-source Office alternatives.

I like Bean, a little free word processor that just does the job and stays out of my way.

The word processor that comes on the Mac, TextEdit, is adequate for most things, stripped down and no-frills, and it syncs your documents with iCloud. The Mac version of MS Office has more bells and whistles but iWork is a nice alternative too. If you're not nitpicky and if cost is a factor, there are the flat but serviceable open source options.

I use Mail and it does everything I need it to do and more in a streamlined, uncluttered interface. I had to help a student of mine with Outlook recently and man, what a headache it was looking at a window stuffed with so many ribbons and tabs and toolbars crowded with icons and text.

Some good online sources of general OS X information can be found on Apple's website, where there are text and video tutorials.

Apple - Support - Mac 101

Apple - Find Out How - Mac Basics

Apple - Support - Switch 101

The Help menu in the menu bar is also actually very helpful and has a lot of answers pretty clearly organized.

Gadgets? Not sure what you mean, as any variety of gadgets will plug and play on a Mac. But the Magic Trackpad is really nifty to use in conjunction with the Magic Mouse and there's also Time Capsule, a wireless external hard drive that works with Time Machine on your Mac to regularly backup your files.

You are in a good place to get all the help you need. Oneironaut mentioned Time Machine in the post above. I encourage you to get Time Machine set up as soon as you can using either a Time Capsule or external hdd. If you are going to use an external hdd, try to get one twice the size of the internal hdd for Time Machine. Once an external hdd is plugged in, Time Machine will almost set itself up!
My point is, once you have a solid back up, play hard with your new mini and enjoy the OSX. If something gets messed up by mistake, you always have the Time Machine back up to get you going again...and you have this forum. There is software available to make it possible to boot from an external hdd as well as back up files. Two I know of are Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper. These will copy the OSX to the drive. I won't say any more about CCC or SD...I use neither so I cannot speak for or against either one.
Also I encourage you to download Onyx by Titanium Software for your specific OS version. It is a highly recommended app for doing periodic maintenance, optimization and a system personalization tool. It is free.