Considering a switch to Mac

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The keyboard short cuts are easy to deal with and if you want you can get a two or three button mouse. MACs are already set up to use them ala MS.

Contrary to some, the Apple mouse actually has two-button functionality, tho it requires a simple change of a default in the system preferences to get it.

[Vinnie]

Excellent idea. I used it.

[Johnny B.]

I wonder what effect Oracle's acquisition of Sun is going to have on the Open Office variants.

Actually, LibreOffice has been set up as a free and open base for the OpenOffice code base.

[dennisw]

I switched to a Mac for a few days then went back to Windows. Windows 7 is exceptional. I fail to see what this fuss is all about. I wish I could nuke the town of Cupertino to help this fad go the way of the hula hoop

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Jam as much RAM in as you can.

Go to Costco and buy two of the highest-capacity bus-powered USB hard disks you can find. Use these in alternating fashion with Time Machine to keep your new little beauty backed-up.

I disagree with other posters’ recommendation of Parallels. If you must run Windows-only software, VMWare Fusion is a more solid choice, IMHO. But only if you need it. (A big advantage of running Windows in a virtual machine is that your Windows instance will be backed up by Time Machine. Time Machine won’t touch a Boot Camp partition. But, if you’re into heavy Windows gaming, Boot Camp gives your Windows installation 100% of your machine’s resources.)

Enjoy!

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

I do recommend buying the three-year AppleCare extended warranty. It’s affordable and the service is superb. But you don’t have to do it right away— you can buy it just before the 1-year factory warranty expires.

[Scoutmaster]

It will run office, internet, cad, & graphics wonderfully, but only on its own software.

By 'own software,' do you mean Apple software? If so, then you are mistaken. My entire Adobe Creative Suite CS5 ruins sweetly on my MacPro and my MacBook Pro, and AdobeC CS5 plays well with Mac's graphics software, as do all of the various plug-ins from countless vendors - RedGiant, Boris, SugarFX, DigitalJuice, Project VII, (and the list goes on).

It's true that a few graphic programs don't run on Mac. Then again, Motion will run only on a Mac.

For fifteen or more years, I built all of the PCs in our house, and they were highly benchmarked. An employer gave me a stipend to buy a new personal computer and laptop right after I built a new graphics-specific PC. So . . . I tried Mac, after laughing at all of the Mac people out there. I posted on FR and asked for suggestions.

After trying Mac, I'll never go back. In fact, the Scoutmaster household and extended (student) household is now Mac, with the exception of pesky Windows 7 notebook that keeps going into the shop. That will be fixed soon with a MacBook to go with her iMac.

[ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton]

I have one nearby. I am going to get down there later this week. Thanks for your tip.

[BlazingArizona]

“Get Parallels. Get at least 4gigs RAM. Be ready to be frustrated by the obtuse keyboard shortcuts.”

Get VMware, but only if you have Windows-only apps you need to run. Most common software, such as Photoshop, Adobe Elements, and even MS Office, are written for both machines.

The Windows keyboard shortcuts you use all the time (CTRL A, C, V, X, P) work the same on Apple, with the Command key instead of CTRL.

There are two big differences you have to remember:

1. there is one big menu at the top of your display, applying to whichever window has focus, instead of a menu attached to each window;

2. Closing the last window of a program does not automatically close the program. You have to Quit, which you can generally do with the shortcut Command-Q.

[AZLiberty]

I really like Apple’s office suite, iWork. While not 100%-compatible with MS Office, iWork is much easier to use. I find that I can generate all the Office documents I need much more easily in iWork and then export them to .doc, .xls, .ppt, or .pdf format as needed.

Occasionally, when I need to modify an existing MS Office document, I may have to use MS apps to keep the formatting exactly the same, although Open Office (free) is another option.

[Gaffer]

Realize you probably like Apple...I don’t have anything against it. But, where there’s a will, there’s a way and a MAC IT department creates as much trouble as a MS IT department. It’s their jobs.

[aruanan]

Realize you probably like Apple...I don’t have anything against it. But, where there’s a will, there’s a way and a MAC IT department creates as much trouble as a MS IT department. It’s their jobs.

We use both Dell and Mac in our lab. We can usually handle anything on either of them, though the Dells give us more trouble. The only reason we have them is because Hitachi designed their 3730 DNA Analyzers to use Dells. They must have some kind of arrangement with Dell. Yay, let's pay $300,000 per machine and be forced to use a shaky platform to run them.

[GoodDay]

Do it.

But spend the extra bucks and buy a MacBook Pro. You won’t regret it.

If you are doing lots of MS Office work only for yourself and your own needs, you needn’t bother with Parallels or VMware Fusion (the latter being the one I use). But if you are in an office environment providing work product for others who are on PC, you might be better off using it. There are always annoying formatting issues — animations, fonts, chart labels, table sizes, etc.— that go awry when going from one platform to the other. If you’re providing a Microsoft work product for a client who is on Windows, it’s best to author the work in a Windows environment. This is far less true of design/layout applications such as those in the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). I’ve never had any problems with them going from one platform to the other, whereas I find there are always problems with Microsoft applications going from Mac to PC or vice-versa.

I have lots of experience with Office 2003/2004 and 2007/2008; I have little experience with Office 2010, but I have been told by others that many of the cross-platform issues have been ironed out.

We’ll see.

Anyway, I made a necessary and long-overdue switch from PC to Mac for graphics and video, working mainly on an iMac (which has been trouble-free for almost four years) and recently acquired a MacBook Pro to give myself greater mobility with certain clients.

If you get a MacBook Pro, VMware (to run Windows 7) and MS Office 2010 (which would run on Windows) you will have a great deal of flexibility.

[GoodDay]

iWork is ok, but I don’t think it compares to Office.

That might be true of apps like Pages (compared to Word) and Numbers (compared to Excel); it is definitely not true of a presentation app like Keynote (compared to PowerPoint).

Most graphic designers and presentation specialists would much rather work in Keynote than in PowerPoint; everything works better and looks better . . . and you can even save your Keynote project as a PowerPoint file.

[erod]

I made the switch three years ago and never looked back. I used to be a heavy Windows user and I always had to clean the damn thing up twice a year. Now I don’t clean it at all because I haven’t gotten a virus, I don’t run a firewall, and my Mac is used by five people in my household and STILL runs as fast as the day I got it. Now I’m switching my parents over to Macs as well, so they won’t need me to come over to repair their computer as much, not that I mind coming over. ;)

Two things that will keep you sane in your switch is this: buy one from a Mac store and ask one of the sales people there how to do a double click on a track pad (very easy) and function + delete equals forward delete. Also if you’re on a budget a plain Mac Book will do, I love the Pros, but I can’t afford one right now. However on a plain Mac Book users get an awesome experience and I use the Mac for graphics, work and heavy Internet use.

You may pay more for a Mac, but you get more, I have a friend who’s a techie and he told me the parts that go into your Mac are better quality than many PCS, also because you save on computer repair – the investment more than pays for itself.

And remember “Once you go Mac – You don’t go back!” :)

[itsahoot]

But you will be very limited in what it will run or do.

iPads are useless, can't run AutoCad or anything useful. </sarcasm>