hi all

hi to all , new old boy here just got myself a second hand mac pro running yeosomite 10-10

used windows for the last 30 years so need all the help i can get lol

Welcome. You'll find lots of helpful folks here. You'll be answering questions rather than asking them in no time.

thanks am old (very) lol electronics engineer turned oil heating engineer using a mac pro cause I'm fed up with windows snails and viruses.
you opinion as to the machine would be appreciated.
its an early 2008 running yeosomite 10-10-1 with 2 x 2.8 quad core , 8 gb 800 mhz ddr2 1024 mob
graphics geforce gtx 285 1024 mb
iv just bought a wifi card and am gonna try to fit it lol
i have loads of stuff from windows pc and tried to use open office to run it but text seems to be all over the place.
any suggestions?

Windows apps don't run on Mac unless you install a virtual environment or install Windows natively on a separate partition using Boot Camp (Win 7 only I believe, though it might be supporting Win 8 by now). You can certainly move your documents, music, photos and videos over without issue, and your contacts and email might come over smoothly with a little help.

There is a built-in program on the Mac called TextEdit that can read Word files, but it's pretty basic. Are you saying you bought and installed Office 2011 for Mac on that machine? If so, the files should open up pretty straightforwardly.

i have vista and office on old laptop and was going to buy parallel and windows for mac but not sure wats best i manly used word and excel / access

If you plan to continue using Office programs, I'd suggest getting Microsoft Office for Mac. You might want to give a try to LibreOffice, an open-source (and free) alternative that should do the job. Worth checking out, anyway.

Apple makes its own versions of Word and Excel called Pages and Numbers. If you're ready for a completely different (but beautiful) approach to Office Work, you might take a look at them. But they are *very* different than what you're used to.

Check out the two essays in my signature, below. And congrats on the Mac.

thanks will have a look at the moment I'm trying to print something that i downloaded lol. i transfer it to desk top but can't print it

is def different to windows and much much better

boilerman said:

i have vista and office on old laptop and was going to buy parallel and windows for mac but not sure wats best i manly used word and excel / access

Click to expand...

Running Windows in a VM like Parallels is a great solution when all else fails and for limited special needs, but relying on it for basics like Office is overkill and defeats the entire purpose of switching to a Mac. Your BEST solution would be to avoid Office entirely, but that's not always practical, as you've seen already with OpenOffice (note: LibreOffice is a fork of the OO project and is more widely preferred, from what I understand).

You can try MS Office 2011 for Mac, however that's getting pretty dated now and I've read of many complaints of it being buggy in Yosemite. I wouldn't count on it being supported much longer. MS is pushing everyone into the subscription-based Office 365, which does have a free trial.

If the printer's hooked up, you should be able to open any Word document in TextEdit and simply choose to print from there.

right so iv lots to do il look for edit text lol (my 5 year old is better at pc than me lol

how do i put the mac spec under my name on the left?

lol just sussed it sorry to pre empt.

MS is pushing everyone into the subscription-based Office 365, which does have a free trial.

Click to expand...

Just a little info about the above: The Office 365 subscription includes PC Office 2013 (already outdated) and guess what else? A copy of Mac Office 2011! LOL. It does allow you to install it on 5 PCs or 5 Macs.

Personally, no thanks Microsoft. ;D

boilerman said:

i have vista and office on old laptop and was going to buy parallel and windows for mac but not sure wats best i manly used word and excel / access

Click to expand...

In my experience OpenOffice (at least the spreadsheet) is somewhat buggy and crash-prone on OS X. Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac works a lot better, if you need that.

Another option is uploading your .doc and .xls files to Google Docs, which will convert them to compatible files within Google Apps. It can't handle everything but basic files it handles well: Google Docs - create and edit documents online, for free. It also supports off line access to your files, although I haven't tested that.

Here is an important video for Windows-to-Mac switchers which briefly describes differences in minimizing vs hiding app windows: MacMost Minimizing Windows Versus Hiding Apps

Also if you are accustomed to selecting a file and hitting the delete key in Windows, in OS X you hit CMD-delete.

On OS X the right mouse button doesn't work by default, instead you use Opt-click (press option key on keyboard and click). You can enable mouse right click under the upper left Apple menu->System Preferences->Mouse->Secondary Click.

Another fundamental difference is OS X apps have a menu bar that stays at the top of the screen. On Windows the menu bar follows the app window around. Get in the habit of checking the menu bar whenever you click on a new app.

Edit/add: in Finder, just select the file and press space bar for a quick preview of almost any file type: .doc, .xls, .pdf, video, photos, etc. While in Preview, press up/down arrows for next/previous file. Press space bar a 2nd time to close it.

joema said:

Here is an important video for Windows-to-Mac switchers which briefly describes differences in minimizing vs hiding app windows: MacMost Minimizing Windows Versus Hiding Apps

Click to expand...

Thanks for that url. Been on that site for quite awhile now watching all the videos. Great resource for a new switcher like myself.

Just seen this. I switched from Windows to Mac just over 5 years ago after being a user of MS-DOS and Windows PCs since the mid-1980s. At the time I purchased a copy of David Pogue's Missing Manual "Switching to the Mac". It saved me a huge amount of time and frustration while planning the transition, copying and converting materials and selecting suitable applications. It was also a useful touchstone for a while once I had made the change. There is a new version for Yosemite ( Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Yosemite Edition - O'Reilly Media ). There are other similar books available but I cannot vouch for them.

BTW I recently put a 500GB SSD in my older 15" mac pro and the difference is amazing. I look after 1,000 or so pictures a month with Photoshop and the difference is night and day.

I used VMWare Fusion and Windows for a while. Then our office system dropped the need for Windows Internet Explorer and I had a threatening e-mail from my service provider that saying that I seemed to have a Trojan that was sending out malware. So I ditched Windows finally and have not used it since. Now I still use Fusion but to run Linux, but that is a whole 'nother story.