looking to switch (former user)

C

chatoyer

Guest
Hi everyone,

Have spent the last three weeks educating myself on the Mac environment. These forums have been absolutely wonderful, I have to say. Bravo to all of you for taking the time to post. I spent most of the 1990s using/owning Macs, and somewhere I still have all 15-16 floppies that contain System 7.5.5. I've owned a PB165, LCII and a IIci. Still wish I had them. Have been away from the Mac environment for 6 or 7 years now.

Anyway, am considered the switch from my Thinkpad X40 to either the MB or the MBP. Money is not an object, but am averse to the 17" MBP simply because I travel a lot internationally and the max size/weight for me would likely be the 15" MBP. That said, I keep reading about the problems with Airport in the 15" MBPs, but not in the MBs, and that concerns me greatly.

Anyway, I'm pretty set in my ways in terms of productivity using XP, and I think I've solved most of the issues that I may face in switching, but still have some questions. First, the issues I think I've solved (in case anyone does a search in the future for any of the keywords below):

1. Outlook (full version) to Mac Mail will be one using O2M (formerly outlook2mac). From what I've read here (and elsewhere), it seems to work pretty well.

2. Bookmarks, etc. in Firefox will transfer no problem.

3. I use FeedDemon *extensively* now for research (I consult with multinational organisations), and it seems NetNewsWire does the same thing, so that's good.

4. I am a *heavy* user of OneNote. While there isn't an exact correlation for the Mac, there are several options available, one or two of which I think I might be able to live with (but more on OneNote in a bit).

5. I use SplashID to hold passwords, credit card details, etc., and there is a Mac version. Yay.

6. Because of Parallels, I'll be able to use SPSS (stats program) and few other windows-only programs. Happy about that.

Right, my questions:

1. I've played around, in the shop, with the MBP and both machines (matte) on display had severe illumination problems on their screens. Viewing angles were not that great either. In short, I wasn't terribly impressed, particularly given that a friend's new 15" Thinkpad has a far superior screen. The MB's screens, however, were fine. I think I could get used to glossy. The question, however, is whether the MB (2.0GHz, 2GB RAM) will have enough grunt to drive a Powerpoint/Keynote presentation with embedded videos (of varying sizes)

2. Let's talk about Spotlight. I use Copernic Desktop Search right now and it is a godsend. I can search emails with filters based on keywords in subjects, 'from' and 'to'. So, I can search for all email messages from my boss with, for example, the words 'raise' and 'promotion' in it. From what I can gather, spotlight does not allow for this detailed level of search. My question is this: are there alternative apps that index/search with the similar level of Copernic?

3. I need a 'notetaking' app that allows me to take a webpage and print to it. In other words, when looking at a webpage, I need to be able to take that webpage and import it into a notes programme. I don't want to save it as an .html file or bookmark it; I want a permanent record of it. Here's what I do right now: when browsing around in Firefox, if I come across a webpage (usually a news article or press release), I use a little OneNote print driver (3rd party) that takes the entire page and prints it to OneNote. It's brilliant, and saves me from copying the page and pasting into, for example, Word. Does anyone do anything similar in OSX?

Thanks everyone - sorry for the length.

chatoyer
 

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