Buying my first macbook

Aved

I just have a few questions about using a mac. I recently had a pc laptop which was very old, slow and had problems from the start so I'm upgrading to a macbook in a week or two.
I was just wondering how easy/complicated macs are to use compared to PCs and how can I get the best possible use out of a mac?
I'll be using it for mainly for college would I still be able to download microsoft power point in order to access college notes?
If I used Mac Word would I be able to print and use saved documents on a PC?
When starting up an itunes library is there anyway I can set it so the music on my ipod won't all be erased and if I entered my account details in the iTunes Store would I be able to get the music I've downloaded?

Any info would really help thanks.

Kid Nothing

Mac are far easier to use than PC's, they might take a while (week or two!) to get used to but in the long run they're great.

Microsoft Office for Mac will work just like the PC version and you can transfer files between the two but look into NeoOffice and Open Office (two free alternatives)

I'm afraid you'll have to transfer all your songs from your original computer and restore your iPod, it's not a hard task only takes about 20 minutes depending on the size of your iPod.

deevey

Lucky git .. your getting the brand new one I'm guessing ?

You'll find everything is compatible filewise for the most part except the odd Windows media files and streams..

and if you do get stuck you can always set up bootcamp / vmware / parallels so you can use windows too

Its a very short learning curve...the fact that they can be so simple is more confusing for the novice most of the time.

J-blk

amull87 wrote: »

I'm afraid you'll have to transfer all your songs from your original computer and restore your iPod, it's not a hard task only takes about 20 minutes depending on the size of your iPod.

Or you could transfer all the music from the iPod to the MacBook with something like Senuti first, then import it to iTunes and erase/sync the music back to the iPod.

K.O.Kiki

Depends on whether you want to keep the Windows machine.
If the iPod's FAT32, the only thing it can't do on Mac is update the firmware.

Passenger

Programs such as Word should all pretty much run the same on a Mac as they do on PC. You'll love Mac OS especially if you're used to using Vista.

MACHEAD

In advance, welcome to Macintosh. If anything MS Office for Mac is even easier to use than the PC version. We have both platforms where I work, the place is networked and mostly PC. The plan was to "migrate to windows", however at least 2 departments are glad they didn't get rid of all their Macs.
In fact, the Dept. I'm in is now upgrading and considering a separate Mac network. Here's hoping !

Aved

Thanks for all the info so far expect may more stupid questions for the nex week or so sorry in advance:rolleyes::o
My pc has completely died and I don't inten to pay to get it fixed just for my itunes files so I'll be importing all the CDs again. Will I still be able to access my purchased items through the new library?

J-blk

If you log back into iTunes with your account details you should be able to re-download the purchased content without paying for it again. I'm not sure you can transfer it back from the iPod using Senuti or other utilities, you can grab the files and copy them to your Mac but I'm not sure if iTunes will re-license them. It should work that way, but I'm not 100% sure so maybe others can shed some light.

apoch632

A program called Perian shoudl cover you for all media extensions. There is also something called wmvflip for mac i think.

ZENER

apoch632 wrote: »

A program called Perian shoudl cover you for all media extensions. There is also something called wmvflip for mac i think.

FlipForMac ?

ZEN

Aved

Is it easy to join a wifi network in general?
When every I try to join my wifi at home using an iphone the wifi sybol will come up at the top of the screen but if I try to get into mail, safari, maps, youtube or itunes a popup come up stating it can't find server. Could this be a problem primarily with the phone or is this likely to happen when I try to connect with the macbook if so what can I do to fix this?

ZENER

Aved wrote: »

Is it easy to join a wifi network in general?
When every I try to join my wifi at home using an iphone the wifi sybol will come up at the top of the screen but if I try to get into mail, safari, maps, youtube or itunes a popup come up stating it can't find server. Could this be a problem primarily with the phone or is this likely to happen when I try to connect with the macbook if so what can I do to fix this?

Have you provided the correct WEP or WPA key to the iPhone. Have you set the IP address settings to DHCP. Does your wireless router have MAC locking enabled, if so have you added the MAC address of the iPhones wifi card ? Is it set to provide ip addresses via DHCP ?

There are many reasons why it won't connect, just be sure you've checked the basic connection details first.

With a Macbook you will have the same issues just like you will with any WIFI enabled device. If you don't know your WEP/WPA key then that's the first hurdle you'll stumble on. Once you know this then the connection procedure is very straight forward. Turn on Airport, it finds available wifi networks, choose yours from the list, it will ask for the key to join the network. Provide it and if it's correct then that's it - connected.

There have been issues where typing in the WEP key on the virtual keyboard of the iPod Touch/iPhone required the caps key being pressed before each character, someone here should recall it. Personally I've never had a problem connecting my iPod or my Macbook Pro to a wireless network .

ZEN

J-blk

The points ZENER makes are definitely the first things to try out - if you don't really know much about wireless networks to make sense of all of the above, just tell us who your ISP is and if you got the router provided from them. That way, someone will have a good idea of what you need to be looking at - e.g if you're with Eircom, you'll have a WEP key in place and MAC filtering is disabled by default.

If you know enough to fiddle with your network settings and you're using WEP, consider changing to WPA. WEP is not only crap security-wise, it's also a nightmare to type in on an iPhone as it uses a long hex key... WPA on the other hand can use a plain English word as a key (though you should use numbers, letters and symbols in the password to be on the safe side) and thus much easier to enter on the iPhone.

BTW, if you need to type all caps on the phone, hold down SHIFT while you type - it actually works, up to a new sentence where if you keep holding it down, the first letter will be lowercase (as it defaults to uppercase).