First time owner here!

Hi all,

Well, after years of wishing, wanting, drooling over Apples Ive finally taken the plunge. Not only have I bought one of them, Ive bought 4! iMac 2.8ghz beast for me, Macbook Pro 2.6 for the wife and Macbooks for the kids!

So, all these lovely machines are currently under the christmas tree waiting for Tuesday!

Anyway, in preperation for Christmas Day I have a couple questions;

1. Can I import my outlook pst file on to my apple computers and still access all the emails contained within that pst file?

2. Do I need a virus scanner for an Apple?

3. (this applies to the imac and macbook pro) Has anyone here used VM Fusion? A mate mentioned it last night if I wanted to continue to run Vista apps on my mac.

4. With VM Fusion, is there a system hit with running the additional OS on top of the computer also running the apple OS?

5. Or should I just use bootcamp?

Anyway, thanks in advance. Im truely looking forward to christmas day like Im a little kid again

Regards

Mailman

Oh, almost forgot the most important question of all!

I want to get rid of my Windows computer, what would be the easiest way of getting all my data off the old windows computer so I can put it on my new imac?

When I say data, Im talking about everything in my "My Documents" folder and various other folders created over the years.

Thanks in advance.

Mailman

1. With Entourage (part of office for Mac) it allows you to import PST files using this tool just change the download language to English.
2. No, you do not need a virus scanner for Mac, you may want to if you are dealing with files destined for a Windows machine and don't want to infect the other machine.
3. I've used parallels and would recommend it i've never used Fusion but many here have.
4. With parallels you can have the virtual machine in its own window or have it integrated within Mac.
5. Bootcamp is great but it's a pain to have to restart just to use a few Windows apps.

And last of all welcome to the forums and I'm sure you will all love your Macs

You could transfer them all over to an external hard drive which is pretty easy. If you don't have one now i would get one since they are invaluable.

mailman said:

1. Can I import my outlook pst file on to my apple computers and still access all the emails contained within that pst file?

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Mail.app doesn't support pst files. However, there are third party applications to which could do the job. You may have to throw couple of $$. You can also try to import those mails first to Thunderbird and from Thunderbird to Mail.app.

mailman said:

2. Do I need a virus scanner for an Apple?

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No. At least at this point.

mailman said:

3. (this applies to the imac and macbook pro) Has anyone here used VM Fusion? A mate mentioned it last night if I wanted to continue to run Vista apps on my mac.

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In my opinion VM Fusion is a better option than partitioning your HDD. This way you can use Vista while enjoying the greatness of Leopard. It is certainly slower than running on Boot Camp but you can avoid restarts, when you want to switch between OSs.

mailman said:

4. With VM Fusion, is there a system hit with running the additional OS on top of the computer also running the apple OS?

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Well, system may slowdown a bit. You should consider buying more RAM. If you are into gaming, VM is probably not the best option.

mailman said:

5. Or should I just use bootcamp?

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I won't recommend unless you won't to enjoy Leopard.

RAM shouldnt be an issue as Ive bumped the imac and macnook pro up to 4GB each

Many thanks

Mailman

Congrats! You'll have a Christmas you'll never forget

If you really need access to Windows (I've been a Mac user at home for years, never needed it), VMware Fusion is the way to go if you ask me.

Haven't tried Fusion yet, but I've used VMware on Windows/Linux for years, and they do a job, and the Fusion screenshots/reviews I've seen are pretty impressive.

Oh.. and yes, buy an external harddrive (USB) to transfer your old files, and to make backups in the future.

mailman said:

RAM shouldnt be an issue as Ive bumped the imac and macnook pro up to 4GB each

Many thanks

Mailman

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Man, you were dropping some serious dough. For future reference, always upgrade the ram aftermarket if you didn't this time. It will save a ton of money, probably 300 or more dollars with 4gb ram upgrades.

EDIT: Just did some quick research and I really hope you upgraded aftermarket. Would have saved you 1200 dollars. That's a whole other macbook in ram.

Money isnt a problem as these are being written off by my company (and honestly, Id rather spend the money than have it go to that mongral in office, Gordon Brown!)

So I think I will stick with VMFusion as I have a few applications in Windows that I havent got around to replacing with mac software yet (office, adobe CS3 etc).

Cant wait for christmas...not sure who is more excited, me or the kids

Regards

Mailman

mailman said:

So I think I will stick with VMFusion as I have a few applications in Windows that I havent got around to replacing with mac software yet (office, adobe CS3 etc).

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AFAIK, a new CS3 license can be obtained for OS X if you contact Adobe. I know some people did so.

Office? You don't have to wait too long

mailman said:

Oh, almost forgot the most important question of all!

I want to get rid of my Windows computer, what would be the easiest way of getting all my data off the old windows computer so I can put it on my new imac?

When I say data, Im talking about everything in my "My Documents" folder and various other folders created over the years.

Thanks in advance.

Mailman

Click to expand...

I'd copy those files from their current location to either a CD, DVD, or directly to your Mac via network connection. After you have copied them from My documents, I'd also go through the various folders under /Program Files to gather data from the applications that store their data in their root folders instead of in your My Documents directory.

If you use Outlook, remember to search for .pst and .ost files, which may be in a hidden directory.
Afterwards, I'd delete the files from the Windows machine, then after emptying the trash can, run a full defrag of the hard drives to scramble their data.

Also, if you are donating or giving the machine away, be sure to delete programs that you have purchased but will not be passing along. This would be your Quicken and other purchased applications.

Perry,

Thanks for that, yes Im giving my old PC away to a friend but I was going to blow the entire thing away before it left the house.

Regards

Mailman

Just wanted to say: welcome to Mac-Forums and to the Mac platform, mailman!