My desktop PC’s showing its age. It still works but is developing annoying habits. I think it’s going to pop its clogs fairly soon, and when it does I’m thinking of getting a Macbook as a replacement. (Fed up with Windows, can’t be bothered with Linux, want something really well designed and built that works well right out of the box).
Can I take the DVD burner and hard drive out of my PC, put them in external cases, and get them working with the Macbook through USB? Or is it not worth the bother? (It could save me some hassle transferring files, and also save me 7000NT on buying the 2Ghz Macbook with a DVD burner as opposed to the 1.83Ghz one with a regular DVD-ROM/CDRW).
Welcome to the apple side, more and more people are switching to Mac, it’s awesome.
I think the 7000NT will be well spend, you won’t regret it, it’s funny you mention that because last week, my brother just switch to mac and he had the same questions. he was used to tweak everything on his PC, eventually he just bought the 15" BookPro and an extra external Hard disk, he said he should have done the switch years ago.
Good luck with your new purchase and don’t hesitate to ask help in this forum.
BTW if anyone want to test your ichat video I’d like that too, I especially would like to test 3 ways video conferencing, my .mac account is igorveni so call.
Cheers
I think the 7000NT will be well spend, you won’t regret it, it’s funny you mention that because last week, my brother just switch to mac and he had the same questions. he was used to tweak everything on his PC, eventually he just bought the 15" BookPro and an extra external Hard disk, he said he should have done the switch years ago.
Good luck with your new purchase and don’t hesitate to ask help in this forum.[/quote]Thanks Igor. So do you reckon it’s not worth trying to do what I mentioned – get the old DVD and HD hooked up to the Macbook?
I’d be happy with 1.83Ghz (actually even that’s far too fast for my needs), but I would like to burn data backups on DVD, and if I can’t use my old DVD burner then I guess I’ll have to buy the 2Ghz Macbook which has one.
Macs can access PC data files alright can’t they? If I can’t hook up my old hard disc drive then I’ll have to burn all my data onto DVDs. Hope the Macbook can read them.
I keep wanting to call it a McBook for some reason. Maybe I’ll get a nice big “golden arches” sticker to put on that boring white casing.
It’d be easy enough to get your old hard drive connected to a new Macbook. Just get an external USB2 box for it. They go for about 1000NT at any computer store. Probably the easiest way to transfer your old files over to the new computer. If you can put everything on your new computer, then you could use the old hard drive for backups. As to the DVD burner, I’ve also seen USB2 external bays in which you could stick some 5.25" IDE device like a DVD burner, but I’m not sure how the burning process would work with that.
[quote=“gary”]You could but it’s nicer to have a built in DVD burner. 7k NT is hardly anything at all[/quote]It’s a lot! But you’re probably right:[quote]I bet you’ll eventually wish you got it if you don’t.[/quote][quote]For the HD, you can network your PC and Mac and copy files.[/quote]So most PC files are fine, even in OSX? (I don’t want to dual-boot with Windows, at least not at first. Too much hassle).[quote]There’s also software than can move your files and Outlook info: Move2Mac and Outlook2Mac[/quote]I gave up using Outlook years ago. I’ve been using my Treo as my main address/calendar thing, backed up with the Palm desktop utility. I might have a look at the bundled Mac PIM software though, as I believe it’s fairly easy to sync with a PDA.
Think twice if you want to sync your Treo with a mac. I had a lot of problems syncing my 650, both with palm desktop for mac and missing sync. Palm has also said it plans to stop updating desktop for mac in the future. I reverted to syncing to my windows computer in the office, as there were less problems.
For anything that won’t work, you can run Windows within OS X: Parallels Destop and VMWare (coming soon); CrossOver Office (in beta) can run some Windows apps.
If you want to run Windows on your PC, that’s nice. I’ll stick to Solaris, some flavor of Linux, a nice BSD, OS/2, Zeta, or QNX…all of which run on a PC without having to jump through any hoops unlike on a Mac.
If you want to run Windows on your PC, that’s nice. I’ll stick to Solaris, some flavor of Linux, a nice BSD, OS/2, Zeta, or QNX…all of which run on a PC without having to jump through any hoops unlike on a Mac. [/quote]
That’s cool.
I care about getting stuff done as fast as possible. If I needed to run some server software that wasn’t available for Mac OS X, I’d use Linux or Solaris. Besides all the hidden interface features of OS X (that most people dont know about) and apps like LaunchBar and QuickSilver (that don’t exist on any other platform), AppleScript remains the easiest way to script applications. I’m not sure if GNOME apps are scriptable? Probably not. It’s not like you can script Firefox or Thunderbird. Maybe you can. You wouldn’t use a shell if you couldn’t create aliases or scripts to make stuff faster; why use applications that aren’t scriptable?
[quote=“gary”]
I care about getting stuff done as fast as possible. If I needed to run some server software that wasn’t available for Mac OS X, I’d use Linux or Solaris.[/quote]
I don’t run a server and Solaris and Linux are fine for desktop use.
How many users care about scriptable applications? Less than .1% maybe? Anyway…I’ve always like Rebol and REXX.
In professional settings, plenty of people script apps. Just like people who really know unix script the shell. Anyone who doesn’t script the shell hasn’t done much to make themselves more productive. Same with apps. But I’m not asking everyone to be experts. Even without scripting, OS X still lets me get stuff done faster than on any other platform.
Some things I script:
general - set window positions, like if I move my browser or iTunes out of the way or resize it, I can quickly resize it back to normal and center it. I use a macro program to have it run thru a hot key
Safari - save archive of current web page
iPhoto - for scanned images, I prefix the file name with the date. I can script highlighted photos to change the metadata date
iTunes - search and replace tags, modify tags, change tag case, copy tags from the iTunes store (for imported CDs when CDDB is inaccurate), export track info (like played count) or rating to SQL (so if I delete tracks, I can readd them later and still have my played count), lookup highlighed track on Amazon …
Finder - batch rename files (really I use a plugin, but i could script it)
I really only heavily script iTunes; other apps I don’t need to much yet.
Even one of the most important unix people, Bill Joy, praises OS X for having features not available anywhere else.
Most people don’t try to learn every single hidden feature of a platform that can make them more productive. I do.
I’m not asking you to switch, just to have an open mind. Having not used a Mac for many years, how can you know how it is?
One very small but important detail about iTunes. When it’s used as a minimized players, the buttons don’t change window focus. So I can be in any app, click pause or next, or change the volume, and window focus doesn’t change. Winamp doesn’t do this. It’ll change focus and you need to then click back to your current app. Not sure about any apps on other platforms. XMMS? Windows Media Player? Who knows. Sure you could use some widget or control in the menu bar, status bar, dock, or somewhere, but who else would consider such small details?
And the time I save by using a Mac is worth much more than $7k. And I do know Windows better than likely anyone here.
