Mac/PC questions

[DB6]

I've just purchased a Mac mini (and very mini it is too) and have a few questions about the little beastie and it's Microsoft siblings. I have looked around the FAQs and tried searching but that's not helped by the fact that Mac is too short a word for the search engine, and a lot of the advice is a couple of years old.
Anyway, in no particular order:
Can any of the Apple software read and write to Word and Excel documents or do I have to buy Office for Macs?
In order to set up a wired/wireless network (Mac and PC) I was looking at a Netgear DG843N; is the AirPort a better bet?
Can I drag and drop MP3 music files from my PC to the Mac or are there visibility/compatibility problems?
For external storage of MP3/video etc. does the unit have to be mac compatible/formatted or can I do that from the minimac?

Thanks in anticipation :}

[James 1077]

Can't say if there is anything already on your Mac which lets you read and write Excel documents but I don't think that there is - I use Office for Mac on mine. I think that if you don't want to spend the money then Open Office (www.openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)) provide a Mac version for free but I have never tried it. This should be compatible with Word and Excel.

I use a NetGear wireless router for mine but am thinking of getting an Airport instead so that I can hook up a hard drive to it and use it as a backup drive and to share music across my 2 Macs.

Macs can read and write to drives formatted in FAT32 but can only read NTFS formatted drives. I don't think that PCs can read Mac drives. Therefore if you want to transfer files you need to do it all from the Mac end (and if your PC is NTFS formatted then you probably (and I can't say if this will work) need to install a FAT32 formatted partition and use that as a conduit for the files).

I think that external storage is probably similar to the above.


Sorry most of this is "probablys" but as mentioned above I've got 2 Macs so not all that much experience in sharing between Mac and PC other than my initial data transfer when I moved to Mac!

[DB6]

Good info, thanks. Found out how to get stuff off the PC onto the Mac but too slow over the LAN so will have to find other methods.

[MightyGem]

Your Mac will have come with a demo of iLife, part of which is Pages, which can read/save as Word documents. You should be able to import your mp3s straight into iTunes.

This (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75320) may help with file transfer.

You'll get a lot of help here (http://forum.macformat.co.uk/) for any other questions.

[jako]

DB6,

try this software:
http://www.neooffice.org

compatible with xls, ppt, ...

Enjoy your Mac.

[Richard Spandit]

AppleWorks (used to be Claris Works) can write MS documents
Router will be fine
Are you transferring files over a wireless LAN? Plugging ethernet cables into the router would be a lot faster - I think that modern ethernet ports can internally switch so you don't need a crossover cable if you are connecting the computers together directly

Just bought a Mac myself - a bit disappointed, if I'm honest...

[Jinkster]

can i ask why you are disapointed.....Im thinking of purchasing next time round!

[Richard Spandit]

I was led to believe that Macs were easier to use etc. The interface is very pretty, but it took me 2 weeks of buggering about to get onto my own wireless network that all my XP machines had no problem with.

There are some little things that made me think Apple didn't put all that much effort into the OS. For example, the Apple Menu, unlike Windows Start Menu, is not customisable - why not? It makes it virtually useless. There is (not free) software you can download to let you customise it, but in my opinion it should be built in already.

iTunes isn't integrated into the OS - so changing tracks whilst you are in another program isn't possible unless you right click on the icon... except Apple don't include a right mouse button on the Macbook that I bought - again, why not?

To play any video fullscreen you either have to download third party software or buy Quicktime Pro - I've just spent 800 quid on a damn laptop and now it says I can't watch my own DVDs fullscreen - to watch any downloaded video you have to start mucking about with codec packages that aren't automatically called.

The file browser, Finder, pales in comparison with Explorer. Perhaps the ethos is different and they expect you to find everything by searching with Spotlight (which is a good feature)

If you don't ever change the defaults on XP then you might get on with OSX but as a reasonably advanced user, I find it severely lacking.

I could go on, feel free to ask any questions :)

RS

[Richard Spandit]

Have a look at: http://www.hartnup.net/wordpress/mac-os-x-opinions/

[James 1077]

Regarding the double click that is pretty easy - just put two fingers on the trackpad and click the button.

The best two finger function is the two finger scroll - I find myself doing this on Windows machines and wondering why nothing happens!

The network thing was an issue when I got my MacBook (Intel model with faster network card) but software updates to the Mac and router have sorted that out now (although to be fair it really shouldn't have been an issue to start off with).

Quicktime is also true - it should come bundled with a full screen mode.

And the Finder / Spotlight thing is an ethos thing - I don't think that I have ever used Finder to find a program in my 2 years of Mac ownership!

I used to be major PC lover who tweaked everything on my PC and tok great pleasure in getting it to work properly; but then my wife forced me to get a Mac to replace my PC when it finally died ('cos it was pretty) and I really haven't looked back. Took about 3 weeks to get the hang of it but it was really well worth it! Doubt that I will ever go back to a PC.

[Richard Spandit]

I do miss the two fingered scrolling when in Windows too, as it happens. I take your point about the right click, but still not as easy as having a proper button...

[Mac the Knife]

Well I dunno....

Just bought the other 'alf (the ultimate technophobe) a Macbook when her old lappy died and she's taken to it like a duck to water. Up and doing 'er thing quite happily with no help from me at all (I did set up the wireless network tho').

Formatting the HDD on the lappy and installing Feisty revived it remarkably (Windows just wouldn't reinstall successfully, probably because of the manufacturers hidden partition). WiFi was a tit though - took me all of an hour.

I'm not a Gnome fan, but the Mac looks very gnomey.

And the Macbook is soooo sexy :cool:

Anything that runs *nix can't be too bad... :p