Have never used Mac's in my life

hi i just got a new macbook pro for college as a gift, ive been a windows user for all my life so i have some questions

1. for expanding files i world normally use winrar on a pc but whats a good free program for mac's?

2. when putting music in itunes do you need to have the music saved in another folder some where so itunes can locate the source? if i use an external hd and put music on my itunes from that, if my external hd isnt plugged in will i still be able to play the songs?

thanks in advanced~~

ehlookitsdavid said:

hi i just got a new macbook pro for college as a gift, ive been a windows user for all my life so i have some questions

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Welcome to the club! Macs are not so hard to get used to as you may think. I too was a long time PC user turned Mac user and I'm pretty comfortable with using a Mac as my only computer.

ehlookitsdavid said:

1. for expanding files i world normally use winrar on a pc but whats a good free program for mac's?

Click to expand...

I use Stuffit Expander on my Mac for all of my compressed files. Works well. Here's a link. Stuffit Expander I don't remember if there is a trial period, but if there is I can tell you it will still unzip files with the free license.

ehlookitsdavid said:

2. when putting music in itunes do you need to have the music saved in another folder some where so itunes can locate the source? if i use an external hd and put music on my itunes from that, if my external hd isnt plugged in will i still be able to play the songs?

Click to expand...

If you put your music into iTunes from an external HD, you won't have to keep it plugged in to your computer to use those songs because they will be on your computer.

ehlookitsdavid said:

thanks in advanced~~

Click to expand...

No problem. =)


- ImageX

Welcome!

1. You are going to want UnRarX. Stuffit, mentioned above is great and you should get it, but it doesn't do .rar files.

2. When putting music into iTunes, iTunes will automatically save the originals in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.

You CAN, if you'd like keep those files on the external, and have iTunes use a directory on the external as the source for your music. The gain is that you have more free HDD space, the loss is that you need the external plugged in in order to play the music. More info here.

1. The Unarchiver expands pretty much every type of file I have come across even passworded archives. It does not seem to do passworded .rar archives. But UnrarX mentioned above does those. But for not passworded .rar and every other type of archive (passworded or not), The Unarchiver is free and works for me like a charm.

2. Very well answered by the two posts above.

thank you, that was a big help