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.
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).
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
IIRC when I went from Microsoft Outlook on Windows to either Entourage or Mac Mail I couldn't find a way to do it all in one shot, so I downloaded Mozilla's Thunderbird email client which is free, installed it on Windows and exported the email out of Outlook (I would think it will work with Windows email too) to MBOX files and then copied these MBOX files to my Mac and imported, it worked fine.
I would export your Library (File, Export Library) to an XML file on your PC. Then copy your music folder as is across to the Mac. That's the easy part, but since the file locations to the music will have changed you will probably need to do a global search and replace to update the correct locations. Only tried this once as a test and it did work.
I've done exactly what you are talking about doing, and have helped others do it as well... it's not difficult.
(1) External hard drive issue is easy seeing as how mac reads PC drives, but not the other way around, NTFS or FAT32 formatted drives are easily read my Mac, therefore interchangable. (once you are done switching, which is the best move you could ever make by the way) - then formatting the external drive to Mac Os extended format instead of a windows format will enable certain things, such as file sizes over 4GB (which does matter for .dmg's etc.) and some file naming structures, as well as better network sharing, etc.
there is a program which converts outlook .pst files from a pc to a Mac Mail (mbox) format. it's chea ($10) and from a company called little machines... http://www.littlemachines.com/
sorry if I re-mentioned something someone already mentioned, but I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off right now working - and just wanted to reiterate that the switch is the very best thing you could do.
Ben Horne wrote:
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....Show more →
I think you'll find that the new MacbookPros have finally got a decent panel in them. Rob Galbraith has a new article available that's worth a look. The old Macbook panels were very average at best.
Funny you bring that up Gordon as the Rob Gailbraith article was one of the catalysts that brought a boiling desire to switch from PC to Mac into action...
This said, I plan to use an external monitor for most of my photowork but it's always welcome to have a better panel to do some editing in the field when you have to.
On a side note, can anyone recommend a good ftp server service to use where you don't necessarily need to zip your files? (Can take a long time to zip a 5GB dossier for example)
