First of all, a BIG thanks to J for hanging out until 2 in the morning, showing me the ropes. I can't thank you enough. If work hadn't held me over, I would've brought home pizza! Thank you so much for all your help.
So we finally got the Mac 'hooked up'. Not that there was much 'hooking up' to do. It immediately found the internet, without all the tears and hair pulling that went along with my past three computers. I was pretty amazed.
The Japanese 'installation' was so painless, I was sure we had missed something. よかったねえ〜
We had to root around for a video player and codecs to support the .avi files. We found one and tested a couple movies, and got them working. Really, it didn't take us all that long. The bit torrent client went much smoother than I ever imagined. We tested a show and it was downloaded in about 15 minutes, which was a far cry from the hour or two on the old computer. The download speed made me sputter--I've never had speeds that fast before...
J showed me around, teaching me how to use the Mac. I'm still stumbling and getting lost, but in due time I'm sure I'll get better at it. There are so many features! It's fantastic! And so SHINY! So very, very shiny.
The DVR gave us a bit of trouble and I still need to get a splicer. But now I can record my TV shows that come on late at night. I'm getting too old to stay up so late! *laughs*
Installing Windows took the longest, and gave us the most problems. But even that was relatively painless. I doubt I'll use it much, and even regret spending the money on a copy of XP. Ha ha~
However, I still have the jitters. I keep thinking, "Things just don't work this well...something is going to go wrong!" Only time will tell, but for now, I'm impressed. I sort of wish I'd bought one of these a long time ago!
Did I mention how shiny it is?
Posted by Zoso at April 7, 2007 02:40 AMOkay, I know I already gave you a congratulatory phone call, but I figured I'd follow up with some cool Mac software/site recommendations.
AdiumX -
The best IM program for the Mac, period. Way better than iChat (though iChat supports video, so you should keep it around) or the official MSN, etc. clients. It's also completely free.
The best stand-alone aggregator for the Mac that I know of. It's commercial, but there's a free "Lite" version that works nearly as well. Read all of your favorite weblogs, news sites, etc. without even needing to open up your web browser. You may also want to try out PulpFiction.
OmniWeb -
Yeah, Firefox is awesome, but OmniWeb is the most powerful 100% "Mac-like" web browser out there. You can download a free nag-ware version to try out. Uses Safari's rendering engine. Another Mac-like browser is Camino, which is based on Firefox. That one is free.
ecto -
A well-regarded weblog editor. You won't even need to log into MT to edit your weblog entries. There's a Windows version, too.
An awesome utility. Primarily used for quick launching of apps, but it has a ton of other uses. Nicely polished and free. May take a while to figure out the coolest uses for it, though.
We talked about this on the phone. Looks like it'll run for a few days unless you feed it a CS2 serial number.
I'll do some digging and see if I can find any others... :)
- Jeff
Posted by: Jeff at April 7, 2007 02:45 PMOkay, now here are some sites that you'll probably want to bookmark.
This site has been around for a long time. A lot of the hints are pretty geeky (and may be of limited interest), but some of them are pretty useful for normal Mac users as well. A good place to go with obscure "how do I...?" type questions.
MacNN -
Best place to go looking for current Mac/Apple-related news and product announcements.
Best place to go for software updates, to find "Software To Do XYZ", etc.
Most of these guys offer RSS/Atom feeds so you can read their articles from your aggregator. If you don't have an aggregator, download NetNewsWire ASAP (I give a link above). :)
- Jeff
- Jeff
Posted by: Jeff at April 7, 2007 02:54 PMThanks Jeff! You've been a great help! I've book marked the sites~ I'm sure I'll be emailing you with all sorts of questions as time goes on. LOL
Posted by: Zoso at April 9, 2007 07:30 PM