Moving from Windows to Mac OS. Tips and advice appreciated.

[electric_blue_kirby]

Voice 1:

The sad part is that you can't open a Windows MS Office paper in the Mac MS Office.

That doesn't sound right. I frequently use Word documents I've created in both versions interchangeably between the two without a problem. I've also had success with PowerPoint, but I've seen some professors run into problems with that. I don't use PowerPoint much, however, so I'm not sure why that is.

Openoffice

I'd more readily suggest LibreOffice.


That out of the way, some basic suggestions:

For a general image viewer, don't use Preview. Use Xee instead.

For unarchiving, get The Unarchiver.

For media, don't use QuickTime or VLC (VLC is terrible on any platform). Get MPlayerX instead (or build mplayer2 yourself if you feel comfortable doing that).

For torrenting, get Transmission.

Cmd+Space will bring up Spotlight. This will let you quickly find a file on your Mac if you know the filename. It can also search for text in documents, as well as doing some basic calculations.

Cmd+delete will send a file to the Trash, Cmd+shift+delete will empty the Trash. "Secure empty trash" will write over what you delete with zeroes, and will take longer.

Clicking the X will probably not close the program, but only the window. (Sometimes it does actually close the program because that's how it works on Windows. It's an annoying inconsistency.)

Most installs are as simple as dragging a file out of a .dmg and into whatever folder you want it in. A .pkg will function more like a typical Windows installer.

If you type something into the "Help" area of a program's menu, hovering over what you wanted to find will highlight exactly where it is in the menu (with a big blue floating arrow, too).

Don't forget to change your dock to your preference. You can change where it's located, set it to autohide, and so on. I have mine set to its smallest size with magnification disabled and autohide on, and moved to the left, for example.


Well, those are just some basic things. I've only been using a Mac for just shy of three years so I won't feign any sort of expertise or veteran status, but I'll try to answer any questions you have if you want.

EDIT:

The programs I recommended are all free, by the way. You can also get Growl for notices if you want, although you'd have to pay $2 unless you're fine with sticking with an older version forever (which has given me no issues so far).

[Thessalonica]

@Etnik
Thanks for reminding me about it. Unfortunately, I tried it because my Dad uses it and a lot of the formatting gets lost when using MS Word and OpenOffice.

@Calypso_Rayne
Thanks, that will be helpful. I don't know where to find the LAB settings in Photoshop. ^^;

@electric_blue_kirby
Thank you so much for the programs you recommended! I've downloaded them all just now. The MPlayerX is really nice. It played an old copy of 3 Idiots that I have without a hitch unlike when I played it with VLC on Windows. >.<

Would you happen to know how to set Xee as the default preview program? I tried to open it's preferences but everything there is greyed out.

[electric_blue_kirby]

Voice 1:

Select an image file in Finder, press cmd+I, go to the "Open with" section, select Xee and click "change all."

But you should be able to set that up from Xee's preferences. When you say "greyed out," do you mean you can't select anything in the preferences dialog, or that the option to open the preferences dialog is greyed out?

[Calypso_Rayne]

@Thessalonica

How to get to it on the color palette
http://oi40.tinypic.com/b6el4p.jpg

How to find it in the color picker, highlighted in Pink.
Al you do is click the radio button next to
http://oi41.tinypic.com/2z9cmjk.jpg

[Thessalonica]

@Calypso_Rayne
Thanks for that! I was looking at the profiles area and I was only seeing Adobe RGB 1198, sRGB, etc and not the LAB. Good thing you posted a screenshot since I was looking at the wrong places earlier. xD

@electric_blue_kirby
The option to open the preferences dialog is greyed out. Actually everything is greyed out, not just the preferences for Xee. I even tried re-installing it to the application folder.

My battery wasn't really charging since I posted this thread, so I kept thinking it might be my battery since it's already old. Watched some vids in youtube after searching for info related to macbook batteries not charging and saw that most of the time it's the magsafe. I tried doing the resets but nothing really happened until I poked the magsafe over and over again on the port. Then the orange light showed up, earlier I was only getting a very very faint greenish light, so when the bright orange showed up, I got excited. It's charging now and I run the battery health app, I found out that the battery is 5.4 years old and has gone through 1059 cycles. And from the original max charge of 5020 mAh, it can only charge now to 4801 mAh.

[Calypso_Rayne]

@Thessalonica You are welcome, I was thinking of just saying where to look, but I know for me I have to see in order to learn, so I decided to get some screenshots. Also, if you work with fonts and different graphics, ufonts.com has an amazing amount of fonts for free.

[electric_blue_kirby]

Voice 1:

Actually everything is greyed out

Is this while the "open file" dialog is open? If so, just cancel that and you should be able to access the preferences.

[Organic]

Openoffice is basically just like microsoft office. There is an ftp client called cyberduck i think. Something duck. Skype is free.

Thepiratebay.org might be useful to you. I suggest transmission for torrents.

As far as getting used to mac os make sure to enable all your touch and swipe features and also make sure to turn on your right click. Besides that just take some time to get used to it you will love it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[cpvr]

I actually wonder how many users here have actually switched from a windows computer to a MAC. If you have, do you prefer the mac over the windows? Or a windows computer over a MAC?