Posted on 10/21/2007 1:00:06 PM PDT by American Infidel
This forum has been a great resource for information, not just for political and media related topics, but for a wide range of other topics as well. This is a testament to the diverse skill sets and expertise possessed by the members of Free Republic. I am hoping to leverage this expertise by asking for some advice in the technical area. I am looking to make the switch from a PC to a MAC. I am hoping that some of you may be able to provide some information or even links to information about some of the pros/cons of making the switch as well as some suggestions on things such as migrating about 5 years worth of Internet Explorer Favorites (mostly links to FR threads) to the MAC platform. I also would like to continue to use MS Office (need to purchase in MAC compatible format) - or can I use a Windows parallel environment(?). I currently have a Dell desktop and printer/copier/scanner. My guess is that a Mac would not be compatible with my Dell printer (?). Any information from those who have made the switch would be greatly appreciated. I was unable to find any previous threads on FR regarding this topic. A lot of the stuff I have googled on the topic has been less than comprehensive. Thanks to all in advance for your advice.
A few suggestions (although nowhere near complete):
MS Office is available for OSX - (Office 2004), but there are other options out there that are 100% compatible (if slightly less intuitive) - NeoOffice... Does not have a comparable email program.
Parallels works pretty well for virtualization if you need to sometimes run windows.
IE favorites can be exported to a file that can be imported by Safari or Firefox (I think).
You might be surprise with the DELL printer. There are several DELL printers on the network where I work - I can print from my little iBook to any of them - and OSX recognizes most of them for what they are. Some DELL printers even have drivers for OSX... So you might check (dell doesn’t actually make printers - they contract them out to real printer makers).
Good luck.
No bomb threats - just advice - FIREWALL and serious ANTIVIRUS as well as SYBOT and ADAWARE are urgently needed....
Have fun...
I guess if the poster wants confusion and complication (but then again - why would anyone buy a Mac if they are looking for complicated?).
And I won’t say your suggestion won’t work - I have seen it work. But certainly isn’t very graceful.
I would suggest that you wait until Oct. 29 to buy your Mac to get OS X 10.5 (Leopard) which has a built-in app called Time Machine. When an external Firewire drive is attached, Time Machine will automatically back up all your files. While you’re at it, install OS X on the external drive - should your internal drive ever fail, you can boot from the external drive. That’s good insurance.
Just curious... what do you find lacking in Safari?
The G5s capability to run Windows software is totally dependent on running an emulation application such as Microsoft VirtualPC (bought from the developers by MS). It works... but very slowly as everything has to be converted from Intel to PowerPC architecture. However, for the occasional absolute need to run a Windows only app, it worked.
The newer Intel based Macs can run Windows as fast or faster than equivalent processor PC boxes.
Why?
The built-in firewall is quite sophisticated. As an experiment, I have been running my Mac (OS X.4.4 through X.4.10) for over a year with the Firewall turned off! There are attempts... but nothing gets through. With the firewall turned on, I have visited security sites that evaluate the security of visiting computers... they don't even see my Mac.
What would the Mac "Spybot" and "Adaware" look for? Six years in the wild, unprotected, with over 23,000,000 users, and there are still ZERO viruses and ZERO ad-ware and ZERO spy-ware for Mac OS X found in the wild. The available Mac anti-virus ware essentially only looks for Windows viruses.
Unless you willingly install the spyware and the adware on your Mac, it can't be installed.
None of the four or so proof-of-concept "Viruses" that has been produced and seen only in security labs will currently work on Tiger... much less so for the upcoming Leopard. None of them has spread for lack of a viable vector... if you can't automatically install it, the only way to get it on a Mac is to fool the user into installing it for you.
When malware appears in the wild, THEN we will consider what anti-malware steps need to be taken.
This being said, if you run Windows OS on your Mac, you WILL need all of the above... to protect your Windows files.
Um, no. FIREFOX is the Mac port of Firefox. Duh.
Ad-blocking plugins are not as well developed as they are for Firefox. In addition, there are tab-browsing plugins for Firefox that put Safari to shame.
It should be noted that most “Dell” printers are just rebadged Lexmarks and the equivalent Lexmark driver will let them work happily on a Mac.
I was using Firefox on PC and Firefox Mac was able to use the profile folder I transferred over. But there’s a program called Move2Mac that will do pretty much everything for you in terms of migration.
As far as printers, Dell uses standard printers like Lexmark, just with a Dell logo on them. Most likely your printer will work right off the bat.
My most despised redundancy. Why not just say "Each non-OS software package .... " or "Every non-OS software package ... "? It means the same and is grammatically correct?
“This reply may very likely reveal my ignorance, but, my g5 is not the dual processor version, it is osx tho. I was told the meta 4 platform was only pc compatible.”
Ok, I was assuming you were buying a new Intel model. The G5 is PowerPC, so yes, you CAN use VirtualPC on that model. You CANNOT dual boot with the PowerPC models.
“Just curious... what do you find lacking in Safari?”
Its not that Safari renders pages badly....its that if Safari can’t “recognize” some advanced features, it simply ignores them.
For instance, there’s a college football board I go to a lot, and Safari displays none of the toolbars or formatting options that Firefox/Camino and IE do.
MacWorld had a really good article on this issue a few months back, with some examples of several webpages between Safari, Firefox, and Opera, and Safari simply doesn’t pick up a lot of features that the other two do.
Which ads? I have pop-blocking turned on and have not had a pop-up ad in years. I don't mind the ads on sites... I recognize that is what pays for the site's bandwidth. I do object to ads popping up and blocking my view of the page I am going to... but I haven't seen one in such a long time I've forgotten how annoying they are.
Tabbed browsing has been part of Safari for a couple of years now... and with Safari 3, you can move tabs by dragging them, pull a tab off the tab bar and make it an independent window... or drag an existing browser window onto the tab bar of another window and make it a tab, and grab a tab from one window and move it to another... sets of tabs can be saved to be re-opened at a later time, bookmarks can be made for all current tabs with a single click... or all windows can be combined by a single click onto one window as tabs. What more can you want? What do the Firefox plugins do that is not on the list above?
Just started a switch myself. Homeschool my 2 girls, and we are determined to keep them computer saavy. Have had a mac mini for about 2 months now. by the end of week 1 with the thing, the kids (14 & 11) had thrown together a DVD presentation on a summer-youth-camp-thingy and showed it at youth group. They are liking it, and I think the next mac purchase will be about Christmas...
I will probably have at least a couple windows boxes going for a few years, but I hope my dual-core Dell is the last one I have...
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-determiners-each-every.htm
Determiners: Each, Every
Each and every have similar but not always identical meanings...
I cannot find a single browser that I can use 100% of the time. Firefox (and therefore Camino) seem to have a variety of memory leaks (any platform, not just Mac). Safari is REALLY fast, but some web pages just don’t work right. Though not really a huge number anymore. Maybe the iPhone has something to do with that.
Thanks for the link but my opinion is unchanged. Used together the are redundant.
More and more businesses are learning that Microsoft’s web building tools create non-standard web pages that use Microsoft’s proprietary HTML add-one that do things that could have been done in standard HTML code and be accessible to all code standard browsers without excluding non-MS using customers which number around 30,000,000.
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