Danny B

As you may remember I recently bought a PowerMac and up until 10 days ago had never used Mac OS X before.

The first night I was up & running on the net within a few mins, took a while to get used to Safari but I could send / receive e-mails ok using the inbuilt mail program.

Second night I formatted the machine and did a clean install as the machine was an ex-demo, no problems at all with that.

Through out the following week I was installing apps and restoring years worth of pc data from a backup DVD I had made.

Now it is business as usual, I bought a copy of Apple Works off of Ebay so my Son can do his homework and I can type up the occasional letter but to be honest 85% of the time it will be used for processing RAW files the other 15% on Scoobynet

So what am I trying to say, basically if a numptie like me can navigate and use it ok anyone can.

I can't see myself going back to a pc to be honest, I have switched on my old pc a few times, but that was only to get some forgotten files and when it was on I had a quick browse on the Internet for old times sake and immediately got reminded that my anti-virus defs needed updating and I had one security update to install

I am half way through reading David Pogues "Missing Manual" and I have only just touched the surface of what this powerful operating system can do.

Love that Kill command in terminal

Cheers

ps- Thanks Marcus, everything is working great

Lum

you could just bung a modern linux distro onto the PC once you're fully switched over. Most of the benefits of OSX and for free

Mossman

Danny, pleased to hear everything is going well !

I have had a 17" iMac for nearly two years now and a Powerbook and love them to bits. On the way is a dual G5 and 23" screen Cannot wait!
Are you on .mac yet!?!? Shoot me a mail with your username if you are and try iChat!

Cheers.

Mossman

Daz34

So when exactly is Half-Life 2 out on the Mac then?................

angrynorth

Great news that everything is going well with the swtich, the only thing is I would look out for a copy of MS office for your word processing stuff as its genuinley very good with OSX, but then again if you only use it from time to time then it may not be worth it.

OSX is one of those things that you just get to like more and more the better you get to know it, I'm sure that things will continue to go the right way for you. It has 2 faces, it can be your best bud, guiding you through stuff or an absolute workhorse just battering its way through everything you throw at it. Its much more powerful than many people realise, eg:

Screengrab from earlier tonight, running are effectively 4 operating systems along with 30+ applications including Photoshop, After Effects, iPhoto, iTunes, Illustrator, Image Ready...

OSX
OS9 (Classic)
Windows XP Professional running under VPC 7
Windows 98 running under Softwindows in Classic Mode


(The screen differences are because the primary monitor is a 20" display, the 2nd is a 17" hence the black bar at the bottom on the screen grab.)

PS someone on here may recognise what I am working on

corradoboy

I don't think I've ever seen such a full dock. Makes mine look a waste of a good processor, just surf net and a bit of home stuff Still would love a 20" G5 iMac though, along with Airport, Airtunes, and a Pod PC nerds never believe me when I say my OS hasn't crashed in over 2 years, and I only run a 400mhz G3 Powerbook with a paltry 10g HD.

Quick question, with VPC would I be able to run THIS and play on-line ???

class_A

Couldn't find the system requirements for LFS, but VirtualPC only emulates a 8Mb SIS graphics card IIRC. They were supposed to be rewriting the graphics system for VPC7 so that it passed some work off to your real GPU but it didn't make it into the final release.

Danny B

OMG, I have never seen a dock so full!
I have to admit though the only thing I could not cope with was the Apple mouse, tried it for a few hrs and put it back in the box. Can't beat a 2 button scroll mouse.

I wish there was a version of http://www.grid.org/download/gold/download.htm for the Mac, I clocked up so many cpu hours with my old pc, seems a shame not to carry it on.

corradoboy

So that's a NO then

Danny B

I spoke to soon..
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandeg.../download.html
Man the G5's are quick, currently 30% through the first project, cpu's on full chat and I am quite happily still using the mac working away.

angrynorth

Corrado, I doubt that VPC can cope with the graphics side of it. Processor wise its fine until it comes to something where the screen has to update Softwindows under classic seems to run better at times.

Danny did you get a G5? if so then join the folding at home team on www.g5support.com

FYI, pretty much every app you could ever want will be available for the Mac if you search it. Try www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com there are few of the problems you get with windows shareware, most of it is excellent!

corradoboy

Is it correct that next year there will be an OS update which will enable PC software to run directly in OS X ? A mate mentioned it yesterday

Markus

Palying games through VPC? To be honest, forget it. I think even the VPC site mentions that it's not a wise idea. It's really for productivy apps than gaming.

My viewpoint is, if you want a pure games machine, get a PC.

As for HL2 on the mac, hmm, there might be a port at some time, but you'd need or at least want a decent G5 to run it on.

Danny B

Yep, I got a G5
I found the Team Mac OS X site and have joined team 1971 for the protein folding app.
Might as well make some use out of those cpu;s when I'm not using it.

Cheers