Made the Jump to Apple today

Well after years of dozens of Dell computers and the problems they all seem to have after 3 years, I made the plunge and purchased an iMAC today. I'm nervous about the learning curve and the compatability with the other computers in my office but I think i made the right choice.

I bought the iMac 27-inch 3.1GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5.

It doesnt come with the Microsoft office software so i need to get that, any recomendations? Any office supply store or is there an online outlet for it?

 

Mac Office is kinda... hit or miss. Not as bloated as Office on a PC but finiky. Google docs works well, if you want to go there.

Congrats on the mac! And welcome to the life of actually doing something with your computer instead of spending all your time fixing it!

First recommendation: quicksilver - free app for launching applications/documents/etc.

 

I did the same thing about 6 months ago.... dumped my PC for a 27" Quad-core i7 iMac... I just upgraded it to Lion and I love it.

I have Microsoft Office 2010 for Mac installed for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Works fine.

Yes there is some getting used to... but once you get the hang of it, going back to an old PC feels so archaic.

I use the iMac for my main home computer then I have an iPad for browsing on the couch and for travel. Works perfectly fine for me.

Still a Dell laptop at the office.... but that's outside my control.

//

 

thanks for the quicksilver suggestion, i'll check it out when i get the machine on the 9th, thats going to be a fun day, i've cleared my calendar.

I fear the email setup so thats mostly why i want the Office software but i know i'm coming from a complete unknown at the moment.

 

your words make me feel good. I'm excited about the purchase, i just hate how bad my Dells are all running lately so if this purchase goes well, i have 5 more iMac's in my future, probably one every 6 months. Ive been buying Dells since 1995 and i've tried to be loyal but damn, talking to Sanjay trying to get things worked out or just constant freezing situations, i've just had enough..

I think i want the ipad, after watching folks on the subway, while i was in NY last month, using ipads instead of phones like i do with my Blackberry, it makes sense. And it makes even more sense to sit on my couch and flip through a tablet instead of my leg burning, glitch filled Dell XPS notebook. I'm moving up in the tech world i guess.

I even dumped AT&T this month. ahhh i feel liberated already.

 

Firstly, "welcome to the 21st century"

IMO, before dumping more $ with Bill, check out Neooffice;

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

I'm not a "heavy" MS Office user, but Word (all formats), xls, ppt, pps et al seem to be OK to me - Both incoming & outgoing if required.

As for mail, good ol' Apple Mail will probably suffice for now - Unless you've got some really specific needs.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Ian

 

I use Open Office (www.openoffice.org)

Welcome to the bright side of computing !!!

 

If mac owners weren't so pretentious, maybe I'd eventually consider one

Honestly, I've never had the issues people talk about; the only real problem's I've ever had are issues that are outside of either Microsoft, or Macintosh's control; IE hard drive failures, or fatigue. I benchmarked my 4 year old laptop just after getting my customized i7 quad core sandy bridge new laptop.

The old one with a 1.67 ghz core 2 duo 3gb ram still did pretty well with the 4M calculation in 2m50s; while the new computer whipped up at 57.2s.

I don't anticipate having the same degree of hdd fatigue in this machine, since I opted for a 160gb solid state drive

 

Swapping out the main drive for an SSD eradicates the bloated feeling of Office. You can negate the relative lack of capacity of an SSD by adding external drives that utilize the Thunderbolt interface as soon as they become available.

SSD boot drives are a must in any PC that sees regular use.

 

my wife, kids & I converted to mac's a few years ago ... never looked back ...

just wondered how we got along without it till now !!!

 

They're all just tools.... Mac does a lot of things very well, and a lot of
things not so well. PC does a lot of things well, and a lot of things not so well.
Linux does a lot of things well, a lot of things not so well.

Post from a MacBook - my main laptop. But trust me I do NOT have Steve
Jobs birthday on my calendar.

I use all three OS's for different reasons.

They're just TOOLS. Some work better than others for given tasks.

Any other opinion sorta just makes someone a "fanboi"



Jedi

 

Please, gentlemen, this isn't a thread about platform pros and cons; don't turn it into yet another thread about Ford vs Chivvy, paper vs plastic, et cetera. Well all know Dell makes crap and Apple doesn't really despite a huge price tag for what you get. The chap has an Apple so the versus posts only detract from the conversation as a whole.

Beyond that, blanket posts that state that SSD's are more reliable than spindle drives are quite a bit off course. OCZ SSD's and really anything with a Sandforce controller are hugely problematic across all platforms and should be avoided. Intel G2's, 320's and 510's lead the industry in terms of reliability and compatibility alone. Sure, there is a firmware bug with some 320's on some platforms, but Intel is working to fix it and the issue will be fixed.

A close second to Intel SSD's are Micron's M3 and M4 drives. They aren't quite as reliable as Intel's products, but they work just has hard to fix issues as they pop up. It may take them a little longer to do so, but they just fix things. Awesome and fast drives with few issues.

SSD's are pretty space limited per $, but the Thunderbolt interface pretty much obviates that as you can now remotely store data and not suffer long waits for moving data back and forth from your PC to your backup device.

 

If I knew how to swap my hard drive for a proper SDD, I'd do it in a heartbeat! I was hoping the Apple would introduce an iMac 27 with SSD option, so I'd make the upgrade. My 27" is now about 3 years old and shows zero signs of slowing down or degradation. BUT, at some point those poor platters and spindles will get tired. It's guaranteed.

It just seems like the next logical move however to get into SSD -- but I'm not sure I want to crack open my machine if Apple has this officially on the near-term horizon.

 

Is your iMac still under warranty?

If not, it may be worth a shot. If it still runs great after 3 years, the price of a new SSD is certainly more palatable than a brand new iMac...

Disclaimer... I've never popped open an iMac, so I can't say for sure what the inside looks like.

 

oh no
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I still build my own!
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I was wrong on the timeline. It is a late-2009 iMac 27. I've been reading on it this morning, and while it's totally possible to do the SSD, I think I'll just wait another year and buy a whole new iMac with the SSR pre-installed from Apple. They offer them up to about 256GB at the moment. I'm currently using around 70GB, so I'll bet it'll work fine for me. (The FireWire disk is my TimeMachine device)
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So i dont need any type of virus portection on this Apple? or do I? If so, where and what.

 

No.

You don't need it on a PC either if you know what you're doing.

 

apparently i dont so i have AVG watching over me for free.

 

Office 2011 is very good on the Mac, specifically if you want 100% compatibility with work files. I also have NEOoffice (which is the same as OpenOffice) but for the mac and not Linux, and you do not have to load X11.

For 250 bucks get MS office 2011 business edition - that way you have outlook as well. I prefer Outlook over Mac Mail as well not to mention compatibility with other Outlook servers.

You can look on Amazon or any tech store to buy MS office for Mac.

 

- Thank you for keeping it simple and very helpful.

 

i use windoze for a specific app that won't run on apple ... a custom software ...

all else on the imac cos i'm now used to NOT seeing the BSD ...

 

u do now ...

get clamxav ... it's free ...

btw, i'm NOT connected to the company in any way ... simply a user.

 

My iMac arrived today... in a plain white box and a handle ontop.

I dont know what to do with it. lol, i'm afraid of it.
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