| Author | Message | ||
     Iman501 |
a while back i had a thread about me asking about macs. well i dropped the money on a pro last night, so i'm waiting for it to get here. I know there are a lot of apps you can get for macs, but what are some that i should get right off the bat? | ||
| Court |
Microsoft Office You likely ordered it . . but it not it's easy to add. I also really enjoy the iLife bundle, Mobile Me and the iDisk. Beyond that . . . all my stuff is photo related Aperture, Lightroom, CS4, Capture NX and so forth. | ||
| Doon |
Well I like iWork much better than office, and there is a free trial on the computer. I would try iwork first and see if I can do everything you want before dropping the $ on office.. Also I would recommend: Adium http://adium.im/ for IM The Unarchiver: http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html for dealing with compressed archives Perian http://perian.org/ and vlc http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ For playing all sorts of video. That should get you started. | ||
| Firebolt020283 |
I have used both iwork and office and though I like iwork better than office I have office and use it now because my wife needed it for school and it makes things easier when doing something related to my work. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
New macbook pro coming in the mail I'm sorry. My wife is on her 6th Apple computer in 2 years. | ||
| Doon |
yeah firebolt, that is why I said try iwork and see if does everything that you want/need. For me i haven't run into anything that I need to do in my work (network geek/programmer), that I've needed office for. | ||
| Jimduncan69 |
Damn Jeremy what is your wife doing to them?...lol i have a macbook pro and my girlfriend has a macbook. we both love them and haven't had any probs with ours. we just ordered another macbook for our daughter for her b-day. it will be here tomorrow. but that is a secret she doesn't know yet. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
We currently have 4 Mac computers in our house plus my PC. There are only 4 people living here! She does heavy graphic design for her girls clothing company and simply crushes them. The last two developed spastic kernals and would crash continuously. The last three have each make at least 4 trips back to the able store for repairs. On top of that, what sadistic bastard designed the power plugs. At $80 a pop, it's the biggest scam in computing. | ||
| Doon |
My wife is still using my old powerbook, now almost 7 years old. And I am using my now almost 3 year old macbook pro. Save for 1 dead hard drive and a dead battery (after 5 years). I've had 0 problems. | ||
| Doon |
i am guessing the spastic kernels etc have to do with some 3rd party programs. My friend who is a Graphic artists loads the damn thing up with so many extensions etc.. for all her programs the box does weird things.. Me I simple. I have a webbrowser a shell and vim  | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Unfortunately, you need the tools to do the job. | ||
| Danger_dave |
I've been hammering them harder than most for over 20 years. One hard disc died and two power transformers have failed in that time. All after more than 5 years of full time magazine, photography and video work. The monitors last longer than the aftermarket ones I regularly buy too. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
She finally went to a two Apple solution. She does the heavy lifting with a desktop and uses the laptop for light duty. | ||
| Court |
I've lost two hard drives in my iMac but the Apple Service is so good that I've spent less than 2 minutes, sum total of both occurrences, on the phone and, in each instance, they were waiting for me when I made the 5 minute trip to the Apple store, replaced the hard drive with nothing but a "thank you" and a smile. VALUE . . . . get it. | ||
| Iamarchangel |
Lost count of how many Macs our family has had over about 20 years. No real problems. Two reformats, one I probably didn't have to do. Two warranty probs looked after very quickly (one was on a used unit I'd sent the card in for). Everything else has been done, updated, upgraded and modded by me. Easy but time consuming. Kernels. There are cures. Iwork: the best, I can show you how to use it way past the trial date if you want to keep "testing" it. The actual price isn't that bad. I did eventually buy it. Powercord: yep, heck of a price or ebay at $5.99 which is what I just did ($9 to ship to Canada), my daughter, I don't know what she does to laptops but they're smoking when she's done. Graphicconvertor (http://www.lemkesoft.com/) will do everything Photoshop will do for a fraction of the price. Truth is I use iphoto for everything anyway. | ||
| Danger_dave |
>>will do everything Photoshop will do for a fraction of the price<< Oh rly :-P  | ||
| Danger_dave |
re OP - I'd also suggest an external terrabyte usb2 hard drive for 'Time Machine' backups. I also have MS Office rather than iWork because my customers supply their data in MS formats. (Message edited by danger_dave on September 08, 2010) | ||
| Iman501 |
thanks for some tips guys! the computer is suposed to arrive the 16th or 17th according to the email i got today. but if any of you think of anything else post it up! | ||
| Xl1200r |
I have a MB Pro and I really like it. Compared to a Windows machine, it does some things better and some things worse. Mostly it's just different. I keep my computers for a long time (as it seems other here do as well). If this one doesn't turn into a useless paperweight like my Thinkpad did after 5 years of abuse and neglect, I'll be sold on Macs. If it does, then I'll have no allegiance. | ||
| Xl1200r |
I prefer Chaxx for chat - integrates with iChat and displays the groups you set up in Facebook (my main chat program these days). | ||
| Doon |
Well iwork reads most M$ formats (and doesn't have issues with the documents I tend to get, but YMMV).. also Check out Acorn if you are looking for a cheaper photo proccessing tool. I need to support multiple IM networks (MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk,AIM, Jabber) to cover all my customers, so Adium works great for me. | ||
| Iman501 |
well my laptop came with a free 8gb ipod touch also.....the ipods here, still waiting on the computer... | ||
| Seanp |
Despite the one naysayer, you'll love the MacBook Pro. There are always some folks who have to hop into a thread and be negative, but I think you'll see most folks here like theirs. I've been using Macs as my personal computers for the past six years, and I wish I'd seen the light long before 2004. I have had one issue with a screen on a 17" PowerBook in 2006, and a hinge issue with my MacBook Air. I'd get a solution for a bootable clone, and buy an external hard drive to clone your HDD to. I use SuperDuper, and it's great. If you've got a lot of books or a lot of stuff, get a program called Delicious Library. It's a great way to use the camera on the laptop to read barcodes and keep an inventory of all your stuff. 1Password is a program that keeps all of your logins and stuff in one place, an integrates really well with Safari, Firefox, or other browsers. If you want to run Windows programs, get VMWare Fusion or Parallels. It's sort of the Coke/Pepsi or ?Dino/Synthetic debate - each program has benefits or drawbacks that sort of negate each other. I use Fusion, but my brother uses Parallels, and neither of us have had issues. | ||
| Chadhargis |
I have three Macs in the house and I'm a Microsoft Certified techno geek if that tells you anything. My Macs are rock solid. Never an issue with them. Meanwhile, I have an HP laptop with keys falling off and a failing screen. Forget about constant rebooting, .dll hell, BSOD, malware, viruses (yes, they exist for macs but they are few and far between), and when it's time to upgrade, that fancy PC will be worth squat, where used Macs fetch a pretty penny. The coup de gras is that you can run Windows on a Mac, but you can't run a Mac on a PC (unless you want to do a Hackintosh project). If I need to use Windows, I have a virtual machine running on my Mac Mini in my basement which I can remote into, but I can also boot into Windows. This message typed on a Mac. | ||
| Iman501 |
well it came today....this is going to take some time to get used to....haha | ||
| Radioelasais |
I have been using macs since ages ... my current macbook pro (old version, it's not the unibody) has been running day and night for months continuously. oh! i am rebooting the laptop from dell I use in the office. | ||
| Xbmacon |
I bought a powerbook G4 1.67ghz 17" laptop (with Microsoft office suite) a month ago. We use it almost exclusively at home even though we have a monster of a pc as well. Cant wait till I can justify the cost of a newer one. | ||
| Maximum |
I bought my wife her first Mac...a Mac Book Pro...a couple months ago when just arriving in Iraq. She kept having reoccurring virus/spyware issues on her old Dell that I was not able to successfully clean up before I left the US.. She loves it! I may look to replace my 5 year old IBM notebook with a Mac next year...but right now my iPad accomplishes many of the required tasks...which is mostly killing time! |
