woo hoo i'm getting a macbook pro... now what?

[sandy_w1]

<p>i've been a pc user all my life. tomorrow, i'll be a mac user for the very first time. i'm picking up a used macbook pro 17". very exciting! i know i should install photoshop, aperture, lightroom, msoffice, iphoto, imovie, itunes. what else? please tell me o-you-fantastic-mac-guru!<br />the spec on my mac "new used mac" is:<br />2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4MB shared L2 cache 17-inch (viewable) MATTE widescreen 1680 x 1050 pixels 4GB 160GB Serial ATA, 7200rpm 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD-RW/CD-RW) NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM Built-in 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme (802.11n) Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) Built-in iSight camera DVI video out with support for DVI video Apple Remote; full-size, illuminated keyboard with ambient light sensor; Scrolling Trackpad Two USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 400 port, one FireWire 800 port, one ExpressCard/34 slot Combined optical digital/headphone out, combined optical digital/audio line in, microphone, speakers Battery Life Up to 5.5 hours Weight 6.8 pounds Operating System: MAC OS</p>

[andylynn]

<p>Very nice. Congratulations. You've done much better than that idiot Giancarlo in the Microsoft commercial who announces he's "tech savvy" then uses somebody else's money to buy HP's crappiest notebook. (Tag line for this campaign: "HP is cheap and you are dumb.")</p>

<p>I have an older version of the 17. It defaults to some weird screen color settings - looks nice but way too warm - so calibrate it. It's beautiful at 5500K and 90 brightness. If you haven't bought the software yet, you can pass on Office (unless you really need it) and go with iWork. Keynote instead of Powerpoint makes it worth it, and Pages doubles as a (not as good as Indesign but, really, nothing is) DTP.</p>

<p>There are some nifty small/inexpensive graphics programs for it, like VectorDesigner, Pixelmator and ColorSchemer Studio. If you do audio, Sound Studio and GarageBand are extremely useful. (Little-known tip: no drivers needed to use a Rock Band USB mic on a Mac! :) Flip4Mac, Perian and VLC so all your videos play. iMovie for slideshow videos but Keynote can export slideshows as Flash files. Adium is by far the best instant messaging program. If there's some Windows program you absolutely need, order VMWare Fusion 1.1 from Macmall and it's $20 then you download the newest version and register it with the 1.1 serial number.</p>

<p>Upgrade the hard drive - it can take WD Scorpio Blue and Black drives off the shelf and find a local shop that can do it. Use Time Machine but don't pay for a Time Capsule, just get a USB or Firewire drive and reformat it and it can be a Time Machine drive.</p>

<p>I use a program called Fan Control that installs as a control panel and lets you set the thresholds for fan speeds - Google "fan control for mac" - because Apple is on more than a bit of crack when it comes to this and thinks I'd prefer running my CPU up to 90C rather than listen to the fan. I could swear they must have pushed an update a while back that made my computer even warmer, and I brought it in to have the fans serviced which made no difference.</p>

[sandy_w1]

<p>hahaha, my current laptop is a hp pavilion (owned it for 3 years). it crashed on me just one time but nearly gave me a heartattack. afterwards, i virus protect like fort worth. i optimize and run performane checker constantly. very time consuming!<br /> few more questions... will my photoshop actions work? how about my WD and Seagate external HDDs work on the mac? or do i have to reformat everything?</p>

[colin_mattson1]

<p>Photoshop actions: Yes.<br>

External hard drives: Maybe. If they're formatted as FAT32, yes. If they're formatted as NTFS, you'll be able to read from them but not write to them.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>NTFS, I have something for that too. I use the MacFUSE freeware <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/19/ntfs-on-your-mac-two-ways/">described on this page</a> - which was a slight pain to install but works perfectly now. I have an NTFS partition for Bootcamp and it's read/write in OSX. The reverse software is MacDrive, which lets you mount Mac disks as read/write in Windows but isn't free.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>What next? Find and join a good user group, preferably one which discusses computers for something besides games. Apple will repair computers, but will not officially acknowledge any problems or bugs. You need knowledgable friends for that.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>learn to use the machine and the OS before you start loading up on applications you may never need/use.</p>

[kuryan_thomas]

<p>Two suggestions:</p>

<p>1. If you need to still run Windows software, look at the virtual machine software from Parallels and from VMWare (also suggested by Andrew). Both are about the same price.</p>

<p>2. If you live near an Apple store, they have this thing called <a href="http://www.apple.com/retail/onetoone/">One To One</a>. For $99, you can get personalized instruction up to once per week for a year. It's worth it, but only if you're reasonably close to an Apple store.</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>get the macaddict and macworld magazine ; )</p>

<p>Oh, and you will never get 5.5 hours of battery life..even new, maybe 3-4hrs not much..so if its a used one..maybe 2-3hre max and not even. 5.5 hour is when you turn everything OFF, put your screen in sleep mode every 1min, and turn down the power of the whole mac evry 2min..</p>

<p>The best advice i could give you; DONT LET THE POWERCORD PLUG when working. It will make your battery reach is death really quickly. Plug it just when the mac ask for it.</p>

[sandy_w1]

<p>Ok, interesting problem I just discovered with my Macbook Pro 17" Hi-Def... If i choose a resolution other than 1920x1200, everything appears blurry. If I stick with 1920x1200, fonts in the menu bar are extremely tiny. I use the zoom a lot but doesn't work with all applications. What gives? it seems like a common issue with Hi-Def screen.</p>