Just about to buy a Mac

Hopefully next week my insurance will have paid out and I will be buy a Macbook pro. Having never owned or used a Mac much at all.
The main reasons for switching are im sick of windows just doing what it wants. Im very interested in photography and everyone says macs are so much better for it and i generally just like apple products.
One thing I was wondering though is I have an external hard drive filled with videos which is formatted to NTFS can I still watch this on a Mac just not edit anything or will it just not work at all?
Also any accessories are must haves or software was thinking open office for my word processor etc as I dont really use them enough to warrant paying for Office etc.

Give Libre office a try (its based on Open Office and developed more) and look at Apple's pages, as for the NTFS drive you can get write access to it

Paragon NTFS for MAC® OS X

Here is the thing about Office (Microsoft). If you work with a lot of people who use Microsoft Office, you would be better served biting the bullet and getting the relatively cheap Mac Office 2011. It is nearly 50% the price of the Windows version. At that point, compatibility will not be an issue between you and those you communicate and share data with. I recommend this being a high priority.

Also, keep in mind computers, regardless of OS, do only what the user tells them to do, even if the user doesnt realize what they are telling the OS to do. My work computer is running on XP and has been on the same image for well over a year with no issues, and I am a heavy user when it comes to computers. Network Engineer... Pay attention to what you are doing, where on the internet you go and ask questions BEFORE blindly pushing buttons and you should be fine. You are probably looking at about a month of getting used to a new OS

Now, here is something else to think about. Wait. dont get a computer until AFTER Mountain Lion comes out. Otherwise you will be jumping from one OSX version to a brand new one in less than 30 days. Be patient. There is no reason to jump quickly and add more of a learning curve than need be.

For just photos, I really see no difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine. They can both use Photoshop CS6 or Lightwave.

I respectfully disagree (only slightly however) with Deckyon. I have always found that there are three factors that make Macs better for photography:

1. The tendency of the OS to stay out of your way.
2. IME the screen tends to be much higher-quality and more colour accurate out of the box. Pros will still need calibration but generally speaking.
3. The elegance of the entire experience fosters more focus on creativity.

Saying you can run the same software on a PC is like saying why buy a pricey car if a cheap car will get you there also? There's something to be said for the extra effort Apple puts into their machines. Call it an intangible if you want to, but productivity studies over the years have shown that Apple users get more done and make more money. There has to be a reason for that.

danny842003 said:

was thinking open office for my word processor etc as I dont really use them enough to warrant paying for Office etc.

Click to expand...

Non Office "office" apps can munge Office document formatting, so if you do serious work on Office files, get Office for Mac. Otherwise take a look at Apple's Pages.

Apple's stock software is pretty darned good. I suggest using it for a while before messing with alternatives.

You don't need much in the way of accessories with a Mac. In my opinion the most important must-have accessories are a couple of external hard drives for backups. One dedicated to Time Machine, and one for manual backups of big libraries (Aperture or iPhoto image library, for example) that you might want to keep out of Time Machine to keep it from grinding away all the time, as well as other handy tasks. I have a third external hard drive dedicated to SuperDuper clone backups (CarbonCopy is the alternative).

The Magic Trackpad is handy, to take advantage of gesture interfacing.

I use the free ClamXav app to scan my iMac periodically for viruses because it's an old Windows habit. Never found any. I do, however, practice good habits to avoid the rare malware risk.

Bootcamp is just one way of installing and running Windows on a Mac.

I wish there was a "LIKE" button for Demapples' post.

I wish there was a "biased" button for certain individuals who post...... Let's not get ridiculous chas. We know how much you love Apple...