A few questions from a (soon to be) new Mac user

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Hello all! This is my first post here, so I hope I do this right...

I don't own a Mac yet, but I hope to get one soon. Actually, I need to get one soon. I dropped my 'current' (read: 'dead') laptop a few too many times, and it seems the hard drive has died on me. I was intending to buy a MacBook at some point in the future anyway, and now it seems my hand has been forced (not that I mind too much ;P) ; I'll be buying a MacBook in the next couple of months, hopefully. I've come to terms with the fact that I might have lost everything in my 'My Documents' folder and my user settings, but I have a couple of questions about my music...

I have a 120Gb external USB drive with about 10Gb of music on it (about 2200 .mp3s and .wavs). It is formatted as NTFS - will I be able to get that music onto my MacBook when I buy it? Also, will I be able to use the external USB drive with the Macbook? It's 120Gb and cost £100 so I'd like to keep it. Obviously I'd have to reformat it in whatever file system Macs use.

Finally, is there a Napster release for Macs? I've done some searches and found some articles but had no lack with actually finding a Napster program for Macs.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give on these issues. :)

-Joe
 
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Mac OS X can read NTFS, and you can copy files from an NTFS volume over to a Mac without problems.

A second source to back up my claim.

As I assume you will be using Napster for legally purchasing music, may I suggest the iTunes Store?
 
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Mac OS X can read NTFS, and you can copy files from an NTFS volume over to a Mac without problems.

A second source to back up my claim.
O.K., that's a brilliant answer to my first question, thanks! :)

As I assume you will be using Napster for legally purchasing music, may I suggest the iTunes Store?

Yes, I use official, legal Napster for my music. I prefer this to iTunes because I can pay a flat-rate monthly subscription and download as much music as I like. Also, I can use it with a Creative-brand (i.e. non-iPod) mP3 player which
cost me less than an iPod with the same storage capacity. Obviously, I would only be able to use iTunes with an iPod. So, as I was wondering whether there is any way I can use Napster on a MacBook. It's not a huge deal if I can't get Napster on a MacBook, since I could use the WinXP desktop I share with my brother and sister for the sole purpose of Napster/Mp3-related stuff.
 
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Obviously I'd have to reformat it in whatever file system Macs use.

Not necessarily true. You can use MacFuse and NTFS to read/write to NTFS-based drives, however I can't get it working just yet. I'm in the process of trying, but I must be doing something wrong. I've posted here a few times in the forums to try to get it working, but no luck.

But it is possible, have a read on: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
 
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Unfortunately, none of the subscription services work (completely) with the Mac, nor do the Creative players. Frankly, Creative's requirement that you use Windows Media Player (the most horrifically cluttered media tool I've ever used, to say nothing of its inclusion of ActiveX support making it horribly insecure) is the reason I went with an Archos video player (which supports mass storage device connectivity in addition to WMP, meaning it will connect to a non-Windows machine). I've read about a plug-in for iTunes that will allow you to transfer music to a Zen, but I don't know if that works for videos too.

Rhapsody has a web plug-in that allows you to use Safari or Firefox on a Mac (and apparently Firefox under Linux) to play music, but this (unfortunately) does not support the Rhapsody-to-go subscription service. I have no idea if Napster has provided similar functionality, but I've not heard anything that makes me think that they have.

If you want to run Napster's client software, you'll have to run it under Windows. Doing this with boot camp kind of defeats the purpose of buying a Mac in the first place, since you'll have to boot into Windows to play your music, but it's free. You can pick up Parallels and run Windows in a window, which should work fine, but that'll cost about $80.
 
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Frankly, Creative's requirement that you use Windows Media Player (the most horrifically cluttered media tool I've ever used, to say nothing of its inclusion of ActiveX support making it horribly insecure) is the reason I went with an Archos video player (which supports mass storage device connectivity in addition to WMP, meaning it will connect to a non-Windows machine). I've read about a plug-in for iTunes that will allow you to transfer music to a Zen, but I don't know if that works for videos too.

...

If you want to run Napster's client software, you'll have to run it under Windows. Doing this with boot camp kind of defeats the purpose of buying a Mac in the first place, since you'll have to boot into Windows to play your music, but it's free. You can pick up Parallels and run Windows in a window, which should work fine, but that'll cost about $80.

I am able to use my Creative with Windows Explorer to copy the music over, so I guess it's possible I could use it with whatever file explorer Macs have? If not, I could just use our shared desktop PC, which runs XP.

I probably won't use Parallels; my laptop, while legal, didn't come with a Windows CD, just a 'hidden' 8GB 'recovery' partition on the HDD and I myself had to burn a Packard Bell recovery DVD for restoring factory settings from the the hidden partition. It would seem silly to actually pay for another copy of Windows on account of buying a Mac just so that I could use Windows programs. I mean, I'm all for irony, but that would just be ridiculous! ;D
 
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I am able to use my Creative with Windows Explorer to copy the music over, so I guess it's possible I could use it with whatever file explorer Macs have? If not, I could just use our shared desktop PC, which runs XP.
You're kidding me...! From what I gathered on Creative's site, WMP was required for transferring music over. Had I known you could drag and drop files without, I'd have seriously considered a Zen Vision W over the Archos (particularly since they support Rhapsody To Go, and the Archos 704 does not). Wish you'd posted this thread six weeks ago before I ordered!! :Oops:

I probably won't use Parallels; my laptop, while legal, didn't come with a Windows CD, just a 'hidden' 8GB 'recovery' partition on the HDD and I myself had to burn a Packard Bell recovery DVD for restoring factory settings from the the hidden partition. It would seem silly to actually pay for another copy of Windows on account of buying a Mac just so that I could use Windows programs. I mean, I'm all for irony, but that would just be ridiculous! ;D

Yeah I don't blame you. One of the few benefits of living in Microsoft-land is that I was able to pick up a copy of XP Pro for $30 at the MSFT store. :) The primary reason I wanted to be able to run Windows is so that I can use my Macbook Pro for work stuff too. This way I only have to carry one laptop with me when I travel!
 
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You're kidding me...! From what I gathered on Creative's site, WMP was required for transferring music over. Had I known you could drag and drop files without, I'd have seriously considered a Zen Vision W over the Archos (particularly since they support Rhapsody To Go, and the Archos 704 does not). Wish you'd posted this thread six weeks ago before I ordered!! :Oops:

Ahh, sorry, I've only been on these forums a couple of days! :Blushing: Yeah, you can use plain old Explorer (and presumably the Mac file explorer), but also you get a CD with the Zen mP3 player which has various utilities on it; one is Creative Media Explorer (or something, I can't even check the name since my laptop's dead), which is basically Explorer with a slightly different look (but still, by all means, Explorer underneath) which is one thing they supply you to use for it. There is also a program to sync your music with your Creative (which I don't use; I prefer to have more control over what media is where) - which makes the sync feature in WMP redundant. However, the Zen is obviously for all intents and purposes an external HDD when one uses it in Explorer, and so obviously copying lots of files to the Zen is going to take some time, but I barely find Explorer slower than when I tried using WMP with the Zen. The Zen and Napster (and Explorer when I only have a few files to copy over) have been a perfect combination though.

Yeah I don't blame you. One of the few benefits of living in Microsoft-land is that I was able to pick up a copy of XP Pro for $30 at the MSFT store. :) The primary reason I wanted to be able to run Windows is so that I can use my Macbook Pro for work stuff too. This way I only have to carry one laptop with me when I travel!

Hmm, luckily at the moment I'm in a job where I don't have to use my own personal laptop at work or work outside of my workplace so I might be able to avoid sending any £s Microsoft's way for a while... :D
 

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