Buying a macbook later today... Quick Q's!

Well first of all, myself and my brother have had the money sitting for new laptops for a little while now and with the keynote not so far away, held off to see what might be out there as opposed to our initial choice of two black macbooks... hey, a new line might even have driven prices down!

Anyways, very impressed with the new Macbook Air but straightaway the price is beyond our budget and also, if we're strictly honest, 1 USB port, 80GB hard drive... isn't suitable for our requirements as we use our computers a bit more heavily and so have stuck with the original Macbook option, hopefully driving out to the nearest Apple store (Glasgow, Scotland) and picking out to blackbooks, with 2GB Ram in the afternoon (It's 4am now, can't sleep, Uni work!). Thankfully we'll get nice student discounts and whatnot so we're looking forward to it.

But, we're both newbies to all things Apple, so will likely be posting back here if we can't find the answers to our own questions via the search function - first question is about iTunes.

I was given a 160GB Ipod Classic for christmas and it's sync'd with my current laptop, a Vaio, everything will be getting moved to the new macbook and the Vaio reconditioned then passed onto my parents - is there a way to minimise interuptions to my normal use of the Ipod, like can I simply start up the Macbook and sync it with the new itunes, is there a way of making it painless at all? Or is it simply a case of transferring all my music to the Mac and "add new folder" until they are all back on itunes and re-sync my ipod with it?

It would be nice to keep things like playcounts, etc... that's all.

I will just keep it to a minimum with one question at a time just now instead of bogging things down with multiple questions - plus, I know you're all likely so busy at the big do across the Atlantic just now... ;D

Thanks.

Wow, We're in a similar situation.

I'm also getting a black macbook today, was planning on getting one last week but I too decided to wait until after the keynote hoping the price would go down or a new macbook that suited my needs would be released!

I'm switching from the PC world over to Mac as well, and I'm a student!

& I added an extra Gb of RAM too!

Technologist, thanks a lot.

buddenbohn said:

Wow, We're in a similar situation.

I'm also getting a black macbook today, was planning on getting one last week but I too decided to wait until after the keynote hoping the price would go down or a new macbook that suited my needs would be released!

I'm switching from the PC world over to Mac as well, and I'm a student!

& I added an extra Gb of RAM too!

Click to expand...

Hahaha, cool - good luck with the swapover, I'm slowly getting to grips now rather than making it up as I go along... so far I've got Adium, my favourite screensaver installed and now I'm online... small steps for mankind maybe, but massive steps for moi!

Got a very good price in the end with the instore student discount, two black macbooks with 2gb ram, a copy of the Microsoft 2008 thing and two applecare packages for just a shade of two thousand of your scottish pounds. Very happy, and best of all, its not from our pockets!

can i ask, what sort of id u need for student as i have my college id but nothing else, as i do it 1 day a week but still at college

Just your matriculation card, and also you can check on the apple website in edu section if you're institution is eligible for it too.

where is it i cant find it mate the list of campus etc

I googled "apple uk student" for mine - just type in your institution name and city and it should go from there.

ah i wish i had done that now its lot cheaper than what i paided! i dont think of these things as im only there 1 day a week

This is killing me...

Select the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checkbox.
Click OK. Note: Clicking OK will cause iTunes to copy all of your music files to another location on your computer. You will need to manually remove the files from their previous locations if you are concerned about space. If your computer does not have enough hard-drive space this process will not work correctly. Please speak to your computer manufacturer or Microsoft for more information on how to obtain more space to perform this action.

Click to expand...

I've deleted as much as I know I can from my old laptop but there's still not enough "space" to perform the task!

I'll keep cracking at it and see how I get on...

Just bought one!

I just ordered my black macbook yestarday and should be here tomorrow. I am excited, I will be switching from windows to mac. I hope I like it.

Right, ended up just erasing and manually adding the artwork etc again - that and I used it as an opportunity to organise some of my MP3s and get rid of the playlist files that caused me to have duplicate albums on itunes... its all looking good now!

Thanks for the help.

Next Q I have - is it possible to password protect folders at all? If so, how?

beambeam said:

Next Q I have - is it possible to password protect folders at all? If so, how?

Click to expand...

I know there is, but I don't think you can make pre-existing folders password-protected. You have to make a new folder that's basically a password-protected disk image, or something... At least that's what I did, but I don't remember how. Surely someone else will be able to tell you better than I, because for all I know, I may have done it the hard way. But I DO have a password-protected folder for my...uh...secrets.

beambeam said:

Next Q I have - is it possible to password protect folders at all? If so, how?

Click to expand...

Did a little research

An encrypted disk image is probably the best way to protect your files. You create a new disk image that OS X encrypts AES-128 encryption, which is very, very difficult to decipher. Whenever you need to access the files, you must mount the disk image, like a flash drive or any other disk image, and enter your password for it.

https://wiki.thayer.dartmouth.edu/display/computing/Creating+a+Mac+OS+X+Encrypted+Disk+Image

There's a guide on how to do it.

If you're looking for something simpler and don't need it to be quite that secure, you can download some 3rd party software. Here's one I found:

http://www.apimac.com/secret_folder/index.php

Secrets? So you have naked pictures of your girlfriend too? Cool!

My next question, share? LOL

Thanks for the information there mate, I'll probably just use the second link you provided, I only want to keep certain things under lock and key so I don't need to worry about people snooping through files when they are on my computer!

Thanks a lot.

beambeam said:

Secrets? So you have naked pictures of your girlfriend too? Cool!

My next question, share? LOL

Thanks for the information there mate, I'll probably just use the second link you provided, I only want to keep certain things under lock and key so I don't need to worry about people snooping through files when they are on my computer!

Thanks a lot.

Click to expand...

You just should not let anyone else use your account. If they want to use your computer, create a guest account.....

beambeam said:

Secrets? So you have naked pictures of your girlfriend too? Cool!

My next question, share? LOL

Click to expand...

Wow. You totally guessed it. And my girlfriend says no, I can't share.

rogerinlondon said:

You just should not let anyone else use your account. If they want to use your computer, create a guest account.....

Click to expand...

That would work, but sometimes when I have friends over, someone needs to use the laptop quickly to check the internet, use an app quickly, etc. I don't want to have to log out/log in/log out every time that happens. I know they're not going to mess with my stuff, I just don't want them stumbling across things I don't want other people to see.

Encrypted disk images and protected folders are very useful for lots of us.

Kuwisdelu said:

That would work, but sometimes when I have friends over, someone needs to use the laptop quickly to check the internet, use an app quickly, etc. I don't want to have to log out/log in/log out every time that happens. I know they're not going to mess with my stuff, I just don't want them stumbling across things I don't want other people to see.

Encrypted disk images and protected folders are very useful for lots of us.

Click to expand...

Same for me.

Kuwisdelu said:

That would work, but sometimes when I have friends over, someone needs to use the laptop quickly to check the internet, use an app quickly, etc. I don't want to have to log out/log in/log out every time that happens. I know they're not going to mess with my stuff, I just don't want them stumbling across things I don't want other people to see.

Encrypted disk images and protected folders are very useful for lots of us.

Click to expand...

Sure they are useful, but you could also enable fast switching of accounts to make it easy to access the guest account. They could also mess up your settings and other stuff while they are at it....