first things to do

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Hey, so im starting pharm school and need to get a laptop, I am considering a macbook (currently have a desktop for games etc) anyway I like the durability and the screen and intrigued by the OS. anyway I have a friend that has a black macbook 13.3 incher 2ghz cpu and a gig of ram. He said I could borrow it for a couple days to play around to see if I like it, question is: what should I explore or learn how to do or download to try and get me to switch, basically like 3-5 things to do on the mac os that lure windows guys toward the pompous mac guy commercial product, thanks in advance
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro 15" 2.33 GHz 3 GB RAM
A few things that stand out for me as great assets that the Mac has over Windows:

- Exposé. This one is amazing. To test it out, open up a bunch of windows (it doesn't matter what they are), then press F9. All your windows will fan out across the screen, allowing you to see all of them and select the one you want. Press F10 and F11 to see Exposé's other two features, showing the active application's windows, and the desktop. I've bound a couple of these functions to my screen corners, allowing me to see my windows with a gesture. This feature is so essential to me now that I'm annoyed with PCs (and old Macs, for that matter) that don't have it.

- Dashboard. To access this, press F12. A group of applications called widgets will glide onto the screen. These can be customized by clicking the i button on the individual widgets, and more widgets can be added using the + button in the lower left. Apple provides several which are useful, and many more can be downloaded. I use mine for my email, checking the weather, and translating between English and French, among other things.

- Application installation and removal. This works completely differently from how it's done on Windows. In most cases, applications are downloaded in the form of a .dmg file, and loaded into a drive image. From there, you simply drag the application into your Applications folder. To remove it, you delete it. That's it. Only rarely do apps have an installer. This one you've got to play with yourself. Download Adium or Firefox as examples to get you going. I prefer this process much more than Windows', particularly since there's no registry on a Mac.

That's just a few.
 
T

todd51

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I would also recommend trying out the FrontRow application. With the nifty remote you receive from Apple it's awesome to scroll through movies, music, or pictures. I mainly use it if I'm studying on my bed with my laptop on my desk, I can just use the remote to change songs!
 
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MBP 17" 2.33GHz
On my MBP, I have to hold down the Fn & then the f9 etc. to use exposé.
 
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15" MBP 2.4GHz 4GB, iPod Classic 120GB
On my MBP, I have to hold down the Fn & then the f9 etc. to use exposé.

go into your system prefs, go to the keyboard settings and check the box that says "use the F1-F12 keys to control software features"

now things like F5 to refresh a browser and your expose will work, and to adjust brightness and things you can use the fn key
 
OP
R
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thats all you guys got for me??? I like the F12 trick and F9 i spose, but this and the remote is all...common think hard for the top 2 reasons you love your macbook...
 
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Your Mac's Specs
15 Inch MBP 2.4 GHz 4GB Ram 160 GB
Well, I only have about an hour and a half on a MBP

But, it was a niiice machine. Fast, simple, easy to use, pretty screen, NO real viruses (yet)

Oh, and I like how the apple lights up on the lid :p
 

eric


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show them:

how fast it boots and shuts down
isight and photobooth
how the dock works (and how it's not just a taskbar)
how easy it is to modify finder to suit your needs (including adding buttons to lauch apps on the toolbar)
automator
mount an external hard drive, move some files on or off it and then simply eject it (rather than messing with window's clunky dismount)
show them a movie running in quicktime... on the dock.
 

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