Gastro

I've decided to treat myself to a new computer and fell in love the new imac g4 (15"TFT, 800Mhz G4, 60 GB).....
I've always used a PC before and have a lot of word, excel documents that I would want to continue to use etc...
Questions....
- How would I find the transition to a MAC system - pros/cons ?
- Can the MAC convert these files for use on the MAC ?
- Anyone got/used the G4 - how do they compare to a good PC for day-to-day use etc....? Anyone got a good PC alternative suggestions....... I want to use quite a bit of digital camcorder files, and digital image manipulation etc ....

Cheers,

Gastro

boomer

Gastro,

pretty much my thoughts n'all - very nice bit o' kit (and i just bought a Sony TRV30 for the video input)!

Just waiting for the official Scoobynet discount/group-buy to appear on the BBS I want the internal 512MB memory though (thus 1GB expansion in the future).

mb

boomer

Oh, and regarding the MS compatability...

You can get MS Office for Mac (for big dosh), and Appleworks seems to understand Uncle Bill's formats, but i guess that we need a Mac guru (hello Mr BlackBeast et al) to comment further!!

mb

Markus

Think I'm qualified to answer seeing as i've been working with macs for about 10 years now (past 7 in support capacity)


- How would I find the transition to a MAC system - pros/cons ?

Well, windows ripped off the mac, so you should find things fairly similar. It does take a little getting used to, but it's pretty easy.

- Can the MAC convert these files for use on the MAC ?
Yup, if you use the latest version of MS Office then it can read/write PC format files, so you should not have any problems.

- Anyone got/used the G4 - how do they compare to a good PC for day-to-day use etc....? Anyone got a good PC alternative suggestions....... I want to use quite a bit of digital camcorder files, and digital image manipulation etc ....

used G4 day to day? only since they came out mate (got about 5 of them here) How do they compare with PC? well, ignore the megahertz myth for a min, cos a 500mhz G4 will, for example in photoshop, wipe the floor with a 1ghz PC. If you're looking for digital camcorder and image maniplulation then you've got iMovie 2 which ships with the machines (movie editing), or for full blown stuff Final Cut Pro (movie editing again). imovie is dead easy to use, simply plug in digital camecorder, fire it up and play, it reall is that simple. for image maninuplation you have got Adobe Photoshop, which was created for the mac and is still in my opinion one of the best packages out there, bar none.

also, if you have a specifc app that you MUST use and it's PC only then something like Virtual PC will help, as it's a PC emulator, it's pretty quick, and I use it lot as we have a few pc only things I need to access, plus our software can be installed on a PC server, so I need to know how to set it up and all that.

Any other mac questions, feel free to email me, or post on here

RichB

The G4 is a fine bit of kit. I never have problems opening MS files on my Mac(s) and never have. Your average Mac will read all PC floppies and CDs, (wont autorun obviously and your G4 wont have a floppy drive anyway).
The G4 towers are really very good. iMovie or iDVD are great, preinstalled on G4s I think, your 60GB disk should be good to get large amounts of on track footage onto DVD (if the G4 has superdrive) otherwise iMovie

Virtual PC works well too. Can be iffy on old G3s but with the spec your talking about should be no problems.

RichB

The other great thing is that you can *tut* and *snigger* when all you mates moan how the latest love letter virus has wiped all their files safe in the knowledge that 99% of all virus won't effect your lovely ickle Macintosh

Not so many games available though...

Markus

hmm, good point about the games, VPC might run some, but anything decent just won't play ball.

very good point about the viruses though. HOWEVER, you should note that even though you can't be infected you can still 'pass it on', though this only refers to the email ones. Suffice to say that I could unwittingly pass on a nasty email virus from my mac

Apart from that, I love the machines.

I want a new iMac!!!!

oh, and I want me G4 powerbook back, mucho fun on the train watching DVD's.

AllanB

Gastro, the Mac is a doddle in comparison to a PC. I was from a PC background and used a Mac for the first time 12 years ago and have not looked back since. I have 5 macs at home now and gave my PC away to my cousin ! Only bought it to play MechWarrior !!

As has been said video editing is a doddle in iMovie and the speed is well most PC users can only wish ! Connectivity is easy too with built in firewire and USB so most popular devices are easilly supported. Most common apps such as Office, Filemaker etc have Mac versions that can open the PC files easilly .


Boomer, sorry I've not been back to you sooner, had some very bad news this week. Email me at work at allan.bayman@eu.mwhse.com and I'll finish of your Scoobynet pricing for you.

Still working on getting MacWarehouse to put up a banner add, did ask for prices but didn't hear back.



AllanB

krankyd

ms office on macosx is considered the best version out to date!

I have used appleworks to import some documents, and it seems OK on word stuff, but I tried to convert a load of docs from excel, with loads of macro's, and it wasn't pritty! I'm gonna bite the bullet and get a copy of office for macosx.


If you are going to do a lot of video editing, and image manipluation ( iknow I cant spell) then i'd not go for the imac, but for a G4 tower. You can really expand them if the need arises, and 2 X 1ghz cpu's are nice!


It's a bonus if your camera supports firewire, as all new macs have firewire ports built in!


[Edited by krankyd - 2/6/2002 11:56:22 AM]