Mac or windows and converters from Windows to Mac

[stephen dohring]

I am certain to need a new computer soon and am fairly sure I should be going

with a Mac to get away from the constant operating system changes from windows,

viruses, poor performance and many other issues. I was wondering if others have

made the switch and are there any tips? I know the new macs are running windows

on them. my main issue besides software changes is my external maxtor hard

drives, can I get them to work easily?

[neelesh_jethwa]

Steve, External hard drives and other periperhals should work just fine. I do no use Windows

OS/Explorer for web when using Parallels. It has worked well for me for the years and I am

sure you will be happy the more you use Macs and my be thank yoursellf for making the

switch. You can call me a convert, but hey 'it works for me' My fifty piasa!

 

Neelesh Jethwa

[beckyh]

Steve, you'll love the Mac! I have a non-intel iMac (G5 PowerPC) running OS 10.4.9, and

also use a laptop running Windows XP Pro. The only problem that I had in initially setting

up my external drives was that the Mac did not have permission to write to the drive. The

Mac would acknowledge it and could read from it but could not write to it. Reformatting

the external drive to FAT 32 instead of NTFS cured the problem. I can now move the

drives back and forth between the Windows and Mac machines without a hitch.

 

If someone else has a different/better solution, I'd love to hear it. This was all I was able

to come up with in an afternoon of research, but it has worked well.

 

Hope that helps! --Becky

[jeffreyc]

Steve, we have an eMac for the office. There will be little gotchas that bite you because you're used to Windows and well OS X isn't. Drag and drop program installs for one. Don't get me wrong it's a cool thing to have. I was running Firefox from the compressed file for a month before I realized.

 

Also, make sure you make any changes to the system settings from System Preferences. For some reason I configured wi-fi from the signal meter and it wouldn't save those settings.

 

Becky mentioned NTFS already, which would be your biggest problem if you have existing externals. One thing to try is to make sure the permissions are set to Read/Everyone before hooking it to the Mac. If that doesn't work you'll have to format. Something else to remember if you have an NTFS drive, Windows will not usually let you reformat it to FAT32 from the GUI so you'll have to use the command line utility: FORMAT [drive] /FS:FAT32 /Q /X. The Mac can also format to FAT32.

 

And absolutely the first thing you need to do before you buy, don't bother with the 1 button mouse. Go buy one your comfortable with, or use the one from your PC if it's USB on the Mac.

 

Finally, don't go! Windows rulz... err... I mean, um... Best of luck with the switch.

[mark_l3]

"the constant operating system changes from windows, viruses, poor performance and many other issues"

 

funny, I haven't experienced any of these things.

[stephen dohring]

Thanks guys - Mark - dealing with the XP, Vista, 98 that is what I mean by changes. Viruses, Virus programs, adaware, added costs for those - pop ups, all that is just something I hear the macs don't deal with. Performance I hear the macs snap right up and power on, the sleep mode works great and battery life is much better. No drivers to deal with.

[mark_l3]

I know what you mean, I just haven't had those problems in my 10 + years of working with non apple pc's.

 

You will see a lot of bs floating around about what apple computers are capable of from the foot soldier on up to Steve Jobs himself.

[dave_thielen]

As someone that has used Macs from Day one and PC's from Day one, do not under any circumstance believe that getting a Mac will solve your problems - bottom line--It's a computer, it is not a matter of if it is going to screw up, only a matter of when, and how bad. The usual answer to when, is when you can least afford the time to fix it. The usual answer to how bad is: far worse than you ever imagined.

 

Anybody that tells you that Macs don't have problems and issues is lying. For the most part, the software is keystroke for keystoke identical between the two operatings systems. The one area where it is better is that there are fewer viruses written for it--but there are Mac viruses. We have one that we use for an email server simply for that reason. But that is all it is used for

[kelly_flanigan1]

UBUNTU desktop and server!

[jeffreyc]

Steve, one (ok maybe two more) comment, I know my Mac is a bit dated but one thing I've noticed while they come out of sleep mode quickly, booting is a different story. Dave does bring up some good points in his post especially regarding when Murphy starts snooping around your computer regardless of OS.

[michaelkh]

"The one area where it is better is that there are fewer viruses written for it--but there are

Mac viruses."

 

There are, essentially, no viable or threatening Mac OS X viruses. There have been some

'root vulnerabilities' on OS X, and a poorly (re-)configured Mac could be vulnerable to the

same class of attacks as poorly configured unix machines, but the mac ships relatively

securely out of the box, particularly compared to Windows (at least pre-Vista; I have no

real information on what has changed since).

 

You don't need a barrage of antispyware, antitrojan, antivirus software, and to deal with

the "that's just because there aren't as many macs out there so there aren't as many

viruses being written" argument: No, it really is not.

 

Steve, you would be poorly advised if we told you that moving to a Mac is going to make

you completely secure; it isn't, and you still do need to keep doing your security updates -

the process of software updates on OS X is considerably less circuitous, which is good.

 

OS X should be pretty much all you need. If it is not, there is Boot Camp (dual booting) if

you want to run windows, and there is also Parallels Desktop (and, soon, a VMWare beta) if

you want to run windows/linux simultaneously with the mac.

 

External hard drives will be fine, there is even a way to run NTFS, thanks to Google's port

of the FUSE system; this sounds like it works exceptionally well, but it's not exactly end-

user-friendly right now.

 

Becky: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-windows-

partition-on-mac-os-x.html

 

If you are not an adventurous or experimental user, I would consider taking out AppleCare

on your new mac.

 

And as to the one button mouse (has this meme not yet died?): you could get the Apple

Mighty Mouse with your new mac, or even (as I still do) use the wheelmouse that comes

with the cheap wacom tablet you will inevitably one day buy.

 

I hope you enjoy using a mac; I maintain that it is, qualitatively, a vastly better user

experience, and I hope you find this too.

[jeffreyc]

Michael, you are right, I forgot about the Mighty-Mouse, but you got me curious: What meme are you talking about?

[beckyh]

Michael,

 

Interesting article. Thanks!

 

--Becky

[michaelkh]

Well, I meant the 'one button mouse as limitation' meme, but if it has passed you by, maybe

it finally is dying!

[jeffreyc]

I gotcha. I never really saw it as a limitation, just how it's different. I was referring to my own knee-jerk reaction to clicking with my middle finger rather than Ctrl (Option?)-clicking or just holding the button down for two-seconds to get the context menu. I should have been more specific.

[michaelkh]

Heh. Actually when I first switched to using the mac, I was coming from both the windows

world (where your hand sits naturally around control/shift/alt when doing many tasks) and

the unix/X world, where three buttons are normal.

 

Instinctively, I think one-button mouse systems are easier to learn and teach, but I too would

find going back to just one button pretty weird now.

 

I don't know if you've tried the Mighty Mouse; I haven't, and I've heard mixed reports.