New iBook switcher

Greetings...

I am new to mac's but not quite to this forum. Been a lurker and occasional poster in the process of waiting/getting my mac.

I ended up with a 12" iBook, probably with the intention of adding an iMac or a Power Mac if I catch a deal. I have been laptop-only for 5 years, so I needed something new and portable, but didn't need the portable power of a Powerbook. So I decided to get the most portable (12" iBook) and add a non-portable power system later.

So far I have loaded up 3 programs so far: camino, aim and MS Office.

AIM was for a few reasons over iChat, such as that my gf likes to hit the 'hide' button when shes on aim so she appears offline but can IM people. On iChat on the mac @ school in a lab, I found that I could read her IM, respond once, but not turn it into a conversation because it didn't recognize her as being online. Also, iChat didn't handle custom smileys the same was as standard AIM.

Camino I got cuz I heard its good and I have been a mozilla user for 4 years.

MS Office came with my system, and I needed some sort of productivity suite, so Office it is.

I am into photography and I am also a programmer. I will be getting the latest Adobe Creative Suite when I get back up to school and get the educational version (cheap).

I guess my question would be..what else should I load up?
Any really good or vital widgets/utilities/programs?

welcome to the club!

maybe a program like onyx or cocktail for regular maint.
downloading wmv helps, or you can try vlc.

Thanks, I will check those out.

A couple other things too:
Within a program, how do you tab through windows.
Such as: safari/camino tabbing through tabs?
or in Aim/iChat tabbing through different chat windows?
in windows you use ctrl-tab for some of that, and alt-tab for tabbing through programs (i know apple-tab replaces alt-tab for that)

Second thing, I guess i should mention I am a bit of a 'power user' and know my way around windows extremely well, and unix to a reasonable extent, but in OS X I am rather limited. This way if you have any tips/suggestions, at least you know what level I am at.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/
Here are the top rated widgets on apples site...

Synergy is a great program for controlling iTunes. I also love Transmit for uploading things to an FTP.

Stephen G said:

Thanks, I will check those out.

A couple other things too:
Within a program, how do you tab through windows.

Click to expand...

<cmd>' to tab through windows of one program
<cmd><tab> to tab through programs

Stephen G said:

Such as: safari/camino tabbing through tabs?

Click to expand...

For Camino it is <CMD><ALT>right and left arrows
I do not know how to tab through windows in Safari though.

Stephen G said:

or in Aim/iChat tabbing through different chat windows?
in windows you use ctrl-tab for some of that, and alt-tab for tabbing through programs (i know apple-tab replaces alt-tab for that)

Second thing, I guess i should mention I am a bit of a 'power user' and know my way around windows extremely well, and unix to a reasonable extent, but in OS X I am rather limited. This way if you have any tips/suggestions, at least you know what level I am at.

Click to expand...

Nothing else comes to mind. For programs here are the list of programs I like:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19924

Sounds good, the window tabbing threw me off the most. Also the camino tabbing feels a bit clunky to me, maybe I will go to firefox which I have used on a mac before.

As for the Widgets, I picked up Air Traffic Control and Wiki last night, as I am a wiki fiend who can waste hours a day on that site. I also downloaded XCode as I would like to think I will try to mess around with some coding. It is my day job and major in college, so hopefully I can make something interesting. Maybe I should look into this widget making deal..

Right now I am using my wacom tablet on it that I have used on my Thinkpad for 3 years or so. Maybe I will pick up a USB Mac keyboard, as they are cheap on educational discount, and its always nice to have an external keyboard from time to time.

Next tricks will be seeing if the iBook plays nice with my external HD's and DVD burner, as well as my scanner. I am sure it will do well.

Should I install anything before I just plug a USB 2.0 external HD formatted FAT32 in, or is it good to go on external HDs? And the DVD burner (also USB 2.0)?