Coming from the Dark Side...

[waynerd]

Well, the conversion from PC to Mac is proceeding along..it's been a bumpy ride this past 10 days.

The new Power Mac G5 arrived Wednesday (a day early), so I took out the ol' spotted cow box, and slid in the new G5, got all plugged up, powered up, and....nothing. Tried 3-4 times, still nothing on the monitor. Tried the neighbor's new 19" monitor, and worked fine. OK, go buy a new 17" flat panel monitor (now it matches the computer, anyway).

I needed to print out a few things, so I went to download the new drivers for the printer, and mine is the ONLY one the manufacturer has that isn't Mac OS x compatible. Now I gotta buy a new printer. AAAARRRRGGG!!! I didn't think about looking for that 9 months ago when I bought the printer.

After futzing around with "mail" for 2 days, I realize I had my pop-server typed in wrong. OK, a little human error thrown into the mess.

I saved all my mail, addresses, and web-favorites from my old computer onto a disk .........that the Mac can't read. Fortunately, I have my old hard drive fire-wired into the Mac, and I have transfered my photo album, but can't figure out how to transfer the mail, addresses and web-favorites over.

OK, what else can I expect?

I like the Mac features, speed, and simplicity. I like the keyboard, too, but hate the standard mouse....gonna buy a new one of those, too.

[jdeanski]

Should have gotten a DELL, dude! At least you wouldn't have had to buy new software.

[jay]

Originally posted by jdeanski
Should have gotten a DELL, dude! At least you wouldn't have had to buy new software.

When I switched I didn't have to buy any new software. It was all already there, even Quicken. I did get this great new experience with iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD for doing some cool stuff I'd never even ventured to do on a PC. And I don't re-boot my machine every three days or less, or get a blue screen, or need to worry about viruses.

[jay]

To move your bookmarks into Safari, try this (from Safari Help):

"If you cannot import your bookmarks from a web browser, you might be able to move them to Safari by exporting them from that web browser as an HTML document. Then open the document in Safari and open your Bookmarks Library in a separate window. Drag the links from the first window to a collection in your Bookmarks Library."

I'm a little surprised that you had a disk the Mac couldn't read. I don't recall ever having a problem moving files on a CD, flash drive or SD card to and from the pc or Mac.

As far as you mail goes, what's the possibility of putting the pc back on your network, forwarding the mail you want to keep to yourself, the reading the forwarded mail on the Mac? Same with moving your bookmarks. Just email the bookmark.html or favorites.html file to yourself, open that html document in your favorite broswer on the Apple side, and re-constructing your bookmarks.

[jay]

To move your addresses (from Address Book Help):

Address Book can import address information only in the following formats:

vCard
LDIF format
tab-delimited file
comma-separated values (CSV) file

To import contact information from another application, you need to save or export a file in one of these formats. You can export addresses in LDIF format from Netscape, and vCards from Palm desktop, Entourage, Outlook, and others. Most databases allow you to export text files in tab-delimited or CSV format.

To identify the kind of file you are trying to import, select the document and choose File > Get Info.

To import addresses from other applications:
Export your addresses from the other application in one of the appropriate formats.
In Address Book, choose File > Import and choose the format of the exported file from the submenu. Choose "Text file" for tab-delimited and CSV files.
Select the file that contains the exported addresses.
Tip: To import many addresses at once, create a vCard that has multiple contacts (if the other application supports it).

When importing text files, Address Book uses labels in the file to know how to import the information into your address book database. For example, Address Book uses the label "Last name" in a text file to match up the corresponding information with "Last name" in your card template. In CSV files, a label appears before each item of information. In tab-delimited files, one set of labels appears at the beginning of the file that tells how the rest of the file is organized. Therefore, it is helpful to export information from another application in a standard format in order to import the information into Address Book. When exporting from Palm Desktop, for example, use the default column layout. If your text file does not include labels, Address Book lets you assign the fields during the import process.

To see the last batch of addresses you added to Address Book, click Last Import in the Group column. The list of most recently imported addresses will be updated the next time you import addresses. Use the View menu to show or hide the Last Import item in the Group column.

You can also use iSync to import contacts from your Palm device. For more information, open iSync and search iSync help for "Palm."

[jay]

For printing to that printer that's not OS X compatible, you may be able to use a gimp print driver, which should be open source shareware or freeware that you can find here.

[iivtecracerii]

i've always wanted to try a mac (for my home computer, i've used them before at school). i think i'll wait until they start using the Intel processors. maybe then i can dual boot OSX and WinXP on a Mac (or maybe they'll even release a Mac OSX version for other PC computers )

[waynerd]

I agree with Jay about the itunes, etc....EASY to play with. The stuff on the PC was a pain manuvering around and manipulating. And lately, I had gotten into a game of "how many times will it lock up tonight" that got old VERY quick. And as for viruses. i;m convinced virus software companies make viruses, so they have something to sell you.

Thanks for the info, Jay. I'll try it when I get back from vacation....two weeks with the wife and Jr in the Pilot...about 3000 miles round trip.

Maybe I shoulda bought a Power Book?