Making the switch to iMac

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JAPPO

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Hi this is very boring so don't read it,

I ordered a new iMac and it should be here Tuesday. The specs are as follows:

iMac 20"
2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo
2 GB DDR2 RAM (667MHz)
256 MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon X1600 VRAM
250 GB Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

I am not officially a switcher yet, but from the looks of it I won't be disappointed.

Is there any good software that none of those lists (stickies) mentioned? I would like to have some dashboard recommendations if possible.

Thanks :cool:
 
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i) If the stickies don't mention it, it's hardly worth it.
ii) We don't know what you need, so we can't recommend anything. This is like selling a car to someone, and it turns out he's missing an arm and a leg.

iii)Great buy, have fun with the iMac!
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Mac Studio, M1 Max, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD
There are a few indispensible packages you might want to consider:
- iClock - a dramatic improvement on the menu clock with LOTS of extras
- Menu Meters - shows CPU load, disk activity, memory load etc. on menu bar
- iGlasses - a great preferences panel for you new iSight camera
- Classic Menu - lets you create a nested "Start Menu" sort of thing out of your Apple menu, just like Mac OS 9 and earlier used to provide
 
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My buddy has the same one, except with the 500gb hard drive... It flippin' blazes! It's insanely fast and encodes AVI's very quickly... Next time I'm over, we're going to test it out for gaming (CoD2, Quake 4, Halo, etc)
 
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Bear in mind that widgets eat RAM. Only have those running that you need to.
 
OP
J

Jaspi

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Hi JAPPO!

This all sounds great. I am also a soon to be switcher. Just ordered the iMac 20" and now waiting for the mail man to knock on my door...

Did you upgrade your 20", because in my country (haha, makes me think of Borat) it comes with 1GB RAM and 128MB ATI Radeon.

It feels like being pushed towards the cliff. Hopefully everything will go down nice and easy but still the pee zee in me is just flippin'.

I'm wondering about a bunch of stuff and maybe somebody will know:

- I want to connect my Mac to the hifi system using wifi. How is this done?
- Is it possible to stream movies and pictures?
- How do I import my outlook adress book to the Mac?
- Any experience connecting cell phone via blue tooth? I have a Nokia N70.
- I currently use a D-Link 624 router. How will they work together? Will I have to buy an Apple Airport whatever its called?

- I also have an Ipod Video 80GB which is very nifty. Will it (iTunes) run nicer on the Mac compared to Win XP?

One final question: all I will do on my future Mac is surf the internet, download music through iTunes, handle my pictures and maybe print some of them..., e-mail, skype (how does that work?) and pay bills. The question is: what must I have in terms of software and what will I have no use of?

Thanks
 
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Your Mac's Specs
iMac 17", Intel Core Duo
I'll chime in on some of those.
- connecting cell-phone through Bluetooth - no problem whatsoever.
- importing your Outlook adress book - I dunno if Mail does it, but Thunderbird or Opera certainly do. From there it should be a breeze
- I though that iTunes was crappy under XP. That may have been because of the PC, not anything to do with the program. I think iTunes runs much nicer on my iMac (Core duo, 1 gig ram).

Skype has a mac version which is good enough. I never use it though. From the looks of it, you'll have all the software you need bar Skype out of the box. iPhoto works great as a photo manager, and the burn to DVD is quite a nifty feature.

Firefox, Thunderbird and Opera all have mac versions, so if you need alternative mail/browser programs, they are available.
 
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Macbook Air, 20" iMac 2.17 Ghz 1GB
I can help somewhat, Outlook 2K3 and Outlook 2000 will not directly export to entourage or mac address book, but will if you export each entry as a v-card file (not sure about Outlook Express though). You can do that by highlighting them all and doing an export or just dragging them off the screen to a folder or jump drive. Then on your Mac just drag them from that drive/folder to your empty address book or entourage pane.

If you have the airport extreme wifi router then you can stream audio through it to your stereo -dont ask me how but it says it will anyway.

iTunes and iPods are great on Macs but suck on Windoze. I couldnt believe the difference.
 
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Skype is dead easy to configure, just install it and if you have the address of a friend or their user name, just perform a search for them and take it from there. You would use your Macs inbuilt mic and iSight. You can also use iChat which I think works best with Audio/Video if you connect Mac with a friend who also has a Mac.
 
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2 iMacs 17+20" 2.16GHz 2GB RAM 500MB HDD 256MB Graphic card. 60Gig 5th gen iPod with Video
I use Skype with video for mac (Works fine when I call my sister in the UK who has a pc) and iTunes everyday.
The standard Mail program is good enough for me. As is iPhoto for my pictures both come with the iLife package on your Mac
 

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