Considering the switch... have some ?s

Hi there,

I am thinking about making the switch to mac. My laptop just died so now would be a good time to jump ship. I mainly use my laptop for website design, ftp, editing photos, burning data cds, preparing slideshows, pdfs, and powerpoint presentations. It seems like the switch would be very expensive to replace the software plus what about losing documents -- microsoft word files, etc. These are the programs I use:

adobe photoshop
word
ftp
powerpoint
excel
roxio cd creator
i am sure there are more i can't think of right now.

any thoughts? how painful/expensive will this be? i have heard great things about mac, but it seems like it could be a difficult process. can anyone offer hope that has been through this before? thanks.

I believe you can contact Adobe's Customer service and they will allow you to switch the license for PS from Windows to Mac. So if you already have it, you would not have to purchase it again. I am not sure how M$/Roxio handles it.

As far as losing documents go,you would not lose them. You can open .psd files in PS on a Mac just as you could on your Windows machine. The same can be said about word documents and excel spreadsheets etc.

Oh and welcome to the board.

Starting up on a new platform will have its costs. Microsoft of course makes Office for the Mac, and new version is planned soon for release. Although, NeoOffice, the Mac version of Open Office is available as a free download.
In short, make the switch you will be glad you did!!!

adobe photoshop - There is Photoshop for Mac
word - There is Office for Mac 2004 (or some of the others that powermacj7 mentioned)
ftp - Cyberduck (free) or Transmit ($30)
powerpoint - There is Office for Mac 2004 but most everyone who has used Keynote (part of iWork) likes Keynote over powerpoint
excel - Office for Mac 2004; Numbers in iWork 08 is a very good alternative if you don't use some of the very advanced features of Excel
roxio cd creator - Toast 8. If you are just burning files though the Mac does it by default (works WAY better than the burning software that ships with XP)

As powermacj7 mentioned, there will be a little bit of upfront cost to switching to the Mac. Based on my experience this year though, it's well worth it!

I made the switch a few months back and the first thing I bought was Parallels, that lets you run Windows inside a VM. That allowed me to use my regular Office software (albeit a bit slower than I was used to) until I bought Office for the Mac. Toast came shortly after that. It was not that expensive with the rebate at the time. Depending on what you are burning to CD/DVD, you may not even need that.

If Adobe will let you switch licenses, then that would be the way to go, if not, I believe that you can upgrade across platforms. Getting a new computer is always a good reason to upgrade anyway

Enjoy

Or you could simply use bootcamp and windows for all of your existing software and upgrade gradually as and when you can afford to.

Then you'll get the best of both worlds.

CookbookChef said:

If Adobe will let you switch licenses, then that would be the way to go, if not, I believe that you can upgrade across platforms. Getting a new computer is always a good reason to upgrade anyway

Enjoy

Click to expand...

You can.

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34459