hey everyone

ive been a pc user all my life im 18. i have 2 laptops and an hp desktop with 500 gb hdd, 2.2 ghz cpu and 3 gigs of ram. i have 900 bucks and my mom said if i give her my desktop she will give me the rest of the money i need to buy the 13 inch macbook pro. it will be my first mac and im pretty excited. im also going to use bootcamp to dual boot windows, im not a fanboy of either os, i like them both. windows seems easier to use for me because ive used it all my life. but macs are so much prettier than pcs. os and physically. so is there much i need to know about the switch to mac?

I think you'll find the mac simpler to use once you have used it for a while. There are some basics, like no home keys. Also, the Control key isn't used much, most commands begin with the Apple (also called Command or Cloverleaf) key. I'll try and find some stickies that might interest you. Hold on a sec.

Let's see here. There are always some basic questions that come up. I'm trying to run though my head on what I all asked when I switched.

1) There is no need to Defrag the hard drive.
2) To uninstall an application, you can simply drag it into the Trash Can.
3) The best equivalent to an IM application would be called AdiumX (Google it) whic will let you connect to many different services such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.

Those were the basic questions I had when I first switched. If I think of anymore I'll post later. I would take some time to browse the forums, you can learn a lot by dedicating a couple of hours to reading. Especially the Switcher Hangout board.

At first I just spent a lot of time exploring different applications and what I needed to do. Eventually when I had everything down I just did a clean install and reinstalled all the programs that I need. It's been working flawlessly since then.

Closing a window does not close the application. You must actually choose "Quit" from the menu (or press Command Q).

The "zoom" (green maximize) button will not make your window full screen, but if you drag the corner of your window to the size you want, it will open up that way the next time you open the app.

To move a file, you have to hold down the Command key while dragging it to its new location.

To switch between windows within the same app (like two Firefox browsers), press Command `. To switch between apps, press Command Tab.

Those are some of the things most Windows users have to get used to when they switch.

another question... my friend said that boot camp is windows virtualization and it only will recognize 2 gigs of ram in 32 bit xp, is that true?

It's not virtualization because you have to reboot to use Windows then reboot back into Leopard. Using just Boot Camp doesn't allow you use both side by side, you'll need true virtualization software like Fusion or Parallels. Not sure about how it recognizes memory though.