I'm seriously thinking about moving from PC to Mac but have a number of questions people with recent experience might be able to help me out with


1. External hard drives - possible to convert over to Mac or have to buy new ones ? (Lacie, Western)
2. Internet bookmarks, Windows mail, etc - does Mac offer a "transfer" package for this stuff ?
3. Anything else you can think of to ease the pain of transfering files etc over to the Mac

Finally, I'd be looking at the top of the line MacBooks - presumably would be a MacBook Pro 17". How does this machine run with 4 Go RAM on Photoshop, Lightroom, NX2...

Feedback most appreciated.

Mark

1. You're sweet on the HD's. If your drives are formated for NTFS, OSX will read them fine but will not write. There are a number of software packages out there that will let you read NTFS drives on Mac, and HFS (mac drives) on PC. Or you can format them to FAT and have both OSX and PC read and write just fine,

2. Good question. As far as I remember, 'Doze has all the bookmarks in a folder under My Computer. You can simply transfer the files, go to your sites and bookmark them again. I don't know about transferring them into your Library where there should be a Bookmarks folder for your Web browsers. Someone might want to chime in on that.

3. Not really. Pretty much all non-proprietary files will run out the box, and if not there is a way to get them to run.

A 17" MBP is a beast. I do most Processing on a 3 year-old 15" with 3 gigs, and most things fly. I have played around with one of the new 17" and that thing is a screamer.

One thing I would advise you to do is to get the RAM from either Crucial or OWC. There is no point in paying for Apple RAM.

1. You should have no problems with the hard drives. I have used many a PC hard drive w/ my macs and never had an issue.
2. I am almost positive that you can just copy your bookmark folder and use "Import Bookmarks" in Safari to pull in your IE bookmarks. Does IE let you export your bookmarks?
3. You shouldn't have a problem with your files. Office files from windows will open in Office for OSX. Adobe stuff all comes across fine (95%) of the time.

I have a 17" Powerbook G4 and HATE it. If I could do it again I would go with the 15" for sure. This thing is too big and to much of a hassle to haul around. It is hard to hold and pick up with one hand. Hard to use on a plane. I am looking to upgrade soon and it will be a 15".

Max out your RAM but don't buy it from Apple (Way overpriced). Mine came with 512 and I had Apple swap in a 1 Gig module. Later I added another to the second slot for $80. It runs great. Ok, it ran great 2 or 3 years ago, it's a little slow these days.

Mac is the way to go!

For 2. the Apple folks at the store should be pretty willing to help you out with that. Usually they're pretty good about that kind of stuff.

Also agree with lovesong about buying ram elsewhere. Pretty much spec out the graphics card and processor how you want them and buy ram and harddrives elsewhere.

My 2 year-old MacBook Pro only has 2 gb of ram and runs Photoshop and Lightroom nicely (until you throw another application into the mix. Lightroom+Photoshop = beauteous, Lightroom+Photoshop+Final Cut = Not so much). Anyways, your new MBP with 4 gb is going to be running them gloriously.

You'll most likely have to reformat the externals if you want to be able to write to them. They should read fine though.

For transferring bookmarks, get foxmarks (now xmarks), which backs them up online. It's definitely the best way to go. (for firefox)

Thanks everyone for the helpful feedback

One thing I'm looking at now is whether the 3.06 is worth the extra cash over the 2.8 GHz

Mark

For everything, you can get the Apple people to transfer stuff over but it could be a couple of days wait. Depends how busy they are. There is no charge for them to do it just the time you have to wait.

I purchased a program 02M I think this is the name, that imported mail from Outlook to Mail. http://www.littlemachines.com/
is the Web. $10 for the program and is download.

Brit-007 wrote:
For everything, you can get the Apple people to transfer stuff over but it could be a couple of days wait. Depends how busy they are. There is no charge for them to do it just the time you have to wait.

I purchased a program 02M I think this is the name, that imported mail from Outlook to Mail. http://www.littlemachines.com/
is the Web. $10 for the program and is download.

Interesting. So you're saying if I bring my PC over to the Apple Store they'll do this for me?

As far as transfer of emails, I see mention of Outlook but does it work for Windows Mail?

Just a side note, I have 4GB Macbook 13.3". The 4GB screams! I can run 4-5 programs simultaneously with little slowing down, if any. You won't be disappointed at all in switching over. I can't speak for HD's you've already written to, but you can use just about any of the mainstream HD's out there. I have had no problems whatsoever with them.

Switching to Mac is like getting a 1D...you'll never look back again! (or so I'm told...if only I had a 1D...)

If you're buying from an Apple store rather than online, you can make an appointment at the Genius Bar and get all the assistance you need in moving from your PC to a Mac.

If you are considering doing any image editing, do yourself a favor and get an external monitor. I would NOT trust the screen of ANY laptop for critical image editing. I have an older Powerbook G4 laptop (same thing as a macbook pro, but about 4 years old). The problem with laptop screens is that they make everything look good. It's difficult, if not impossible to be critical on editing your images on a laptop.

While on a trip a couple years ago, I did some edits on my calibrated laptop screen. I then transferred those files to my desktop (G5). I was amazed at how bad the files looked. I could have done a better job if I was on drugs, blindfolded, or a combination of the two.

Ben's advice, specially when taken with the 15 inch vs. 17 inch debate, is good: get the smaller laptop screen (unless you have an absolute need for the 17), and spend $200 to $300 on a nice external monitor... and hardware calibrate it.

The 17 inch laptop is really a niche product for those who need to have a biggish screen away from home/office, and for whom portability is secondary. For most people, the 15 inch, with the best video card you can get and post-purchase upgraded RAM + Hard Drive + external monitor for home, is a much better solution. (I actually think the best solution is 13 inch for the road, separate computer at home... but then you're getting more expensive.)

Thanks everyone.

Have a 24" external screen which I calibrate - but often go to the countryside on weekends and just bring the laptop, so handy to have something with a decent size screen.

Would go with the 15" if only they had a matte screen...

Mark

mholdef wrote:
Interesting. So you're saying if I bring my PC over to the Apple Store they'll do this for me?

As far as transfer of emails, I see mention of Outlook but does it work for Windows Mail?

They will. The only thing is the time. They may want to keep it for several days which means that you do not have your PC or new Mac for that time. It really depends on how busy they are. I would ask the question at the store. This is all part of the Apple Service.

Outlook or Windows Mail should be covered by the program.

for transferring files over to the new mac, check out migration assistant.

http://www.apple.com/pro/tips/migration.html

its a breeze from what I remember... its been around 5 years since I've had a PC as a main computer, but when I had one, transferring over everything was pretty easy. To echo what others have said, if you bring your PC into the apple store and arrange an appointment with the genius bar, they will transfer everything over that you need for free. It is a great service.

Do Apple stores provide this service even when you buy online?

Yes

Mark,

I did the same thing, PC workstation to a Mac Pro, last summer and I haven't looked back.

1. As others have mentioned your drives will work fine. When I migrated my data I copied everything from the NTFS volume onto a drive on Mac, formatted the drive, then copied everything back and then removed all the silly little files that Windows creates like desktop.ini and thumbs.db.

2. Bookmarked copy across fine. Though mail was a little more complicated. I used Outlook 2007 on Windows and although I had tried Entourage on Mac I didn't like it, so I am using Mac Mail and I like it alot. I actually installed Mozilla Thunderbird on my PC, imported all my email into that from Outlook, and then exported the email in MBOX format, if I remember right, and then imported those MBOX files into Mac.

3. Not really, it's a one shot deal really and I didn't have any problems.

Macs are great and so simple and I love the ability to just turn the machine on and use it right away. Not saying Mac is better than PC in general, but for me it certainly is. I did take me a little while to find Mac equivalents to all those neat little utilities I had on the PC but that is all sorted now.

Take a look at this thread I started some time ago, the feedback from everyone really helped alot.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/669521/0?keyword=favourite,mac,apps#5976874

Cheers

Alistair

Great stuff!!!



Cheers

Mark

I currently use Safari for windows and it has an import from IE feature you might want to load it, it is free and far better than IE IMHO.

Thanks but I generally use Firefox

Following AJ's tip, I've set up an account at xmarks, great stuff !

Mark

One thing I realized is that in France we don't have Apple stores but only resellers. This means that I don't have the same service as I would as with a Genius bar...

But the different links provided offer some good basic advice to start with, and I know I can then turn to the online support for more when I need it.

Great thread. My next purchase will be a Mac. I'm tired of the PC BS.

I'm pretty happy with my Mac Pro tower. It's not perfect, but OS X seems to handle certain basic tasks on its own, in a way that Windows never did. The time saved alone made the extra cost of a Mac worth it.

For example, I no longer have to bother with running apps like Spybot, CCleaner,O&O defrag, or have to run background processes like an AV or spywareblaster.

BTW if you use a service like Dropbox (I heart Dropbox), you can just copy any basic files for settings or templates over to that folder, and then access it on your mac. I do this for Actions in PS, Captions in Photo Mechanic, Word Docs, etc.

I do this regularly because I have a Dell Laptop (and I'm quite sad panda about it).

Max

BTW, coming back to Windows Mail.

I've heard of applications that can download and transfer all old emails to Mac but can anyone refer me to a programme for Windows Mail?

Thanks

Mark