I am all in!! But what a nightmare.....

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I am now switched and I thought I might share some of the experiences for the benefits of some of you that might otherwise run in to similar problems as me. I have used PC's extensively since the time before Windows and was also a Macintosh user for a few years at work around 15 years ago, so some of the concepts in the Macworld are not completely new to me (although much have changed and they DID crash a lot in those days).

I had been thinking about switching for quite a while, mainly to not having to fight with the sometimes erratic behaviour of Windows with installs that do not work, driver conflicts and the Blue Screens of Death as well as the coolness-factor of the Mac's hard and software. The decision was made easy when Intel was introduced, so that a few applications and games could still be run under Windows, but without destabilising the Windows-install (hopefully).

I put in my order on September 15 in the Apple store in London, using the so called kiosk system. WARNING – if you are in the UK, make sure that you call your credit card company to confirm the transaction if you do this. I discovered that the credit card companies consider this to be a vendor transaction (although it is really done on the internet, but from within the store) and my transaction was selected as needing additional confirmation from the vendor to get approved. Since there is no vendor on the other end of the line, my transaction was rejected, without me knowing about it. I then had some problems to get my bank to understand how it worked and to accept the transaction at all, due to the above, so I had to do it a total of 4 (!) times before it worked, but a couple of days later the order was in with an estimated delivery date of only 10 days later, which was good considering that I had asked for all the stuff to be delivered together.

The delivery date came and went and the following day, I got a e-mail putting the expected delivery date back two weeks...

The revised delivery date came and went and two days after that , I got a e-mail putting the expected delivery date back one more week....

In time for that date, the MacPro showed up, all on its own. I was also having a charge put through on my credit card for the MacBook Pro at the same time! I would have expected both to have the stuff delivered together and the the full order amount charged to my credit card once, but neither was the case. After having spent some time of the phone with Apple, the rest of the stuff arrived, individually, over the following two weeks with various odd amounts charged to my credit card.

Over the next three weeks, there were suddenly two more attempts from Apple to charge the full order amount to my credit card which were thankfully rejected by my bank!

Anyway, one very good thing with the delayed delivery was that the MacBook Pro arrived within the two week period of the announcement of the new Intel Core 2 Duo upgrade so I could get it switched! And yes, someone at Apple confirmed that they have this two week limit within which you get the new kit without questions asked when an upgrade is done. I was quite happy to get that confirmed since the trackpad on the first I got I thought did not work properly and the price was less that I paid for the first one so I got the difference refunded! I got in to trouble though asking for a 160GB hard drive when the first delivery had 120GB. Although it was still cheaper in total, it seemed to require the approval from at least Steve Jobs himself and I spent quite a lot of time on the phone getting that finally done.

Apple was then arranging for TNT to agree a time with me to come and pick up my old MacBook Pro. The time came and went but TNT did not. They claimed that no-one had been home which was not that strange since Apple had given them the wrong address! After having been told by TNT that only Apple could instruct them to go to another address and after having asked Apple to do so, I agreed a new appointment. It came and went but TNT did not since that change of address had somehow not gone through the system!! When being in contact with TNT again, I discovered (by pure coincidence, I had not been told this) that TNT have a dedicated Apple-desk and they could change the address and finally get someone over to pick up my “old” MacBook Pro. If you ever have a problem with the delivery in the UK, ask to speak to the Apple-desk at TNT, they were very helpful and knew what they were doing.

Anyway, it is all here now and it s working extremely well for the most part. I love the cleverness in the details of many solutions but you really need a book like “Switching to Mac – The missing manual” or something like that to learn and appreciate everything. After having used the Mac's for a few weeks, it actually somehow felt wrong to install Windows XP through Boot Camp, although it is also working very well.

I have a few things that are a bit irritating (for some of which there might be solutions that I am not yet aware of), though such as for example:

I am having some problems with the wireless connection where the MacBook Pro loses the connection if I connect my Windows laptop from work and I have to reset the router to reconnect, which is irritating. If anyone is having problems to connect to a wireless network, reset the router as a first action. It might save you loads of time.

I also tried to install the Palm Desktop for Mac and it does not work on my main user, but if I set up an additional test user, it works on that one. How infuriating is that?? Have tried repair permissions, reinstalling in all possible ways and even copying the files across as well as having been in contact with both Apple and Palm, but it just do not work. I know I could switch and use the test account as my main account, but I can not be bothered now with all the settings that would need to be changed again.

Since I have both a desktop and a laptop, I am also trying out .Mac, but if Mail is open when I sync the mail account settings it corrupts the preference file and it all needs to be set-up again (by syncing with .Mac so it is not difficult, but irritating). Are you not supposed to be able to have Mail open when you sync? Does not make any sense to me.

Also had a disappointing experience with Toast 7 Titanium. I had sworn never to use anything from Roxio again after having had Media Creator conflicting with and external DVD-writer on my PC. I noticed that everyone was saying that Toast was fantastic, so I bought it. I then needed to burn some 3.7GB of photos for some of my wife's relatives that were visiting (yes, they take a LOT of pictures). So I fired up Toaster and burned a DVD that could be read by both Mac and Windows. I tried the DVD in my old PC and some of the files were corrupted and could only be read partially. The same files could be read with no problem on the Mac, though. Since I was a bit short of time I used Nero on the PC and burned a new DVD which works fine for both Mac and Windows. Both a bit disappointing and embarrassing....

Finally, I am not very happy with the wireless keyboard and mighty mouse. The connections get lost more than it should and the mouse actions does not feel precise at all. I do not think it is a matter of habit or has to do with the weight of the mouse. If I connect an other mouse, it feels less wobbly. The scroll-button also lives a life of its own where for several days last week, I could not scroll downwards, but now suddenly I can again. Weird. All in all, I think that mouse is a product that looks better than it works.

Sorry if this turned out to be very long. There are loads of other observations that I could have mentioned, but maybe some other time.......
 
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I'm getting a mighty mouse and every time I read about it somebody is saying it's not the real deal. I hope I can make the thing work when I get it (for Christmas).
 
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I also tried to install the Palm Desktop for Mac and it does not work on my main user, but if I set up an additional test user, it works on that one. How infuriating is that??

That doesn't seem right. I've got Palm Desktop loaded on 3 Macs in my house (Quad, iBook and Intel iMac) and it seems to work fine. Are you using the latest version (4.2.1D) from Palm?

Since I have both a desktop and a laptop, I am also trying out .Mac, but if Mail is open when I sync the mail account settings it corrupts the preference file and it all needs to be set-up again (by syncing with .Mac so it is not difficult, but irritating). Are you not supposed to be able to have Mail open when you sync? Does not make any sense to me.

Never used it, sorry. Are you using iSync to do it though?

Also had a disappointing experience with Toast 7 Titanium. I had sworn never to use anything from Roxio again after having had Media Creator conflicting with and external DVD-writer on my PC. I noticed that everyone was saying that Toast was fantastic, so I bought it. I then needed to burn some 3.7GB of photos for some of my wife's relatives that were visiting (yes, they take a LOT of pictures). So I fired up Toaster and burned a DVD that could be read by both Mac and Windows. I tried the DVD in my old PC and some of the files were corrupted and could only be read partially. The same files could be read with no problem on the Mac, though. Since I was a bit short of time I used Nero on the PC and burned a new DVD which works fine for both Mac and Windows. Both a bit disappointing and embarrassing....

I've had that happen a few times, but when I move the corrupted files to my PC on a memory stick they were still corrupted. Not sure how or why they worked on one system and not the other.

Finally, I am not very happy with the wireless keyboard and mighty mouse. The connections get lost more than it should and the mouse actions does not feel precise at all. I do not think it is a matter of habit or has to do with the weight of the mouse. If I connect an other mouse, it feels less wobbly. The scroll-button also lives a life of its own where for several days last week, I could not scroll downwards, but now suddenly I can again. Weird. All in all, I think that mouse is a product that looks better than it works.

I'll get a lot of disagreement here, but stay away from Apple Keyboards if you can and Apple Mice in general. I ditched the Mighty Mouse long ago and have not used an Apple keyboard in 7 or 8 years. In fact, I use a Microsoft Trackball at home, and a 3rd party Keyboard made for use with a Mac.
 
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Congrats on the purchase, and thank goodness it all worked out in the end! That's pretty awesome that you were able to trade up for free when the new processors were released. Not many companies offer new-release upgrades like that.
 
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Sorry to hear of your frustrations, Most I cannot relate to but I have no issues with the bluetooth keyboard or mouse from apple. Mine stays connected and works great. Could there be something interfearing with the signal?
 
M

MacHeadCase

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I too have the Bluetooth Mighty Mouse and it works very well, never dropped a connection.

Sorry to hear about all the trouble you went through but now that it's all finally fixed, you can get down to learning about Mac OS X.

I use Toast Titanium 7 to burn hundreds (jeez! Thousands even!) of photos in RAW and .tif and have not had any problems.

Did you put in Toast's preferences to verify the burn before ejecting the disk? What type of media do you use? CDs and DVDs are not all created equal, unfortunately. Did the bad/corrupted files episode happen more than once?
 
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So MHC...you think I'll like my new Mighty Mouse?

I am presently using a Kensington Studio Mouse (wired) and have liked it but I figured Apple would do a great job as usual on a decent mouse. Hope I am not disappointed. Seems to be a 50/50 proposition at this point from everything I read.
 
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MacHeadCase

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This is all subjective of course. But I'll tell you two things, CrossBones.

The best ergonomics in a mouse for me was the Logitech MX1000 but the tracking was so crappy... I just couldn't use it in Panther, the cursor hopped randomly around on the screen and it was impossible to use it to draw. I did all sorts of troubleshooting to no avail. I then tried it on this new iMac with Tiger and while the cursor behaved less erratically, it still wasn't good to use to draw as the cursor would jump either left or right by one or two pixels. The driver for Mac OS X wasn't updated at all and, after paying over $100CAN for this computer rodent (I bought it when it came out, price went down after a while), I wasn't about to buy a USB driver for it either (I figured I had paid enough already). So I ditched it.

I got the Mighty Mouse and the change in ergonomics took some getting used to but, man, do I ever love the scroll button! Beats any scrollwheel in the world! To the point where I gave my corded Mighty Mouse to my partner for the iBook and I bought the Bluetooth model (why not? I asked myself, I have Bluetooth built-in) and I can tell you I am very happy with it, no wires on the desk and tracking is smooth as butter!

I like it very, very much (it made me forget about the lost ergonomics of the MX1000) and I hope you will too. :girl:
 
M

MacHeadCase

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Nice. I can't see why you wouldn't like it. Just one thing though: the scroll button does get clogged up with dirt sometimes (we have cats and the building is old with lots of dust in the apartment) and it stops scrolling up or down, depending, after a while. You just roll the button with a cotton swab slightly dipped in rubbing alcohol and it's back to its scrolling smoothness.
 
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Nice. I can't see why you wouldn't like it. Just one thing though: the scroll button does get clogged up with dirt sometimes (we have cats and the building is old with lots of dust in the apartment) and it stops scrolling up or down, depending, after a while. You just roll the button with a cotton swab slightly dipped in rubbing alcohol and it's back to its scrolling smoothness.
That is a great tip. I'll remember as that is one thing I have read people complaining about.
 
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rogerinlondon
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That doesn't seem right. I've got Palm Desktop loaded on 3 Macs in my house (Quad, iBook and Intel iMac) and it seems to work fine. Are you using the latest version (4.2.1D) from Palm?



Never used it, sorry. Are you using iSync to do it though?

Yes, and the Palm desktop also works on my laptop, so it is weird. The only thing I can think about is that when I first installed it, I tried to HotSync before I opened the application and that might have corrupted some setting somewhere maybe (but that is Windows-logic so I am not sure if it is applicable here.....).

iSync is used for syncing devices, like a Palm, but the mail account settings are synced through the .Mac preferences directly by ticking the relevant boxes and that is how it is supposed to be done, I think.

What make of keyboard are you using then?
 
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I use Mac keyboard and Mighty Mouse and can't say I've ever had a single problem with them.
 
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It's good to see you recommend the Missing manual series of books that the one I use too. Don't buy the dummies Mac os X Tiger edition ( It's infantile in it's manner. Note to self.Ok what do you expect when it's got "For Dummies" on the cover)
I have yet to have a problem with my BT keyboard or Mouse
 
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rogerinlondon
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I use Mac keyboard and Mighty Mouse and can't say I've ever had a single problem with them.

It might not be a problem with the mouse and keyboard, but with the Bluetooth on the MacPro, I guess. Anyone else with that combination having problems?
 
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rogerinlondon
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Did you put in Toast's preferences to verify the burn before ejecting the disk? What type of media do you use? CDs and DVDs are not all created equal, unfortunately. Did the bad/corrupted files episode happen more than once?

Yes, the disk was verified. I used a Verbatim DVD-RW, Nero had no problem to burn it properly and it was the only time that tried to use it so far.
 

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