Reply to: Switching to a Mac

[HYpno27]

Personally I hate it when they do this and insist on the cash.

They offered to stick it back on the Amex, but I fancied the idea of a gift card as at some point I'm going to treat myself with a new Ipod and I'll have already paid for it - silly I know

[Peter Loew]

Sorry, never got back to let you all know the result.

I bought a 20" I MAC, as the 24 would not fit in the space I had linned up.

I found it to be a good, shopping experience - the guy I dealt with went through all my concerns, showed me examples for my questions, let me play with it. Didn't oversell let me save docs and slides and spreadsheets import to a windows laptop, all sorts of helpful. Spent an hour with me.

I also bought the wireless hard drive at the same time, which didn't work, and when I took it back there was no quibble, and they refunded the full amount to a gift card.

I've been using the thing for a couple of weeks, including working from home on docs and sending them back and forth and logging remotely onto client co systems with Safari and found everything to be fine and dandy

I have been a happy little Hypno

Well done! After about a year I think I have mac versions of all the Windows apps I need to use. Can't go wrong with NeoOffice, great product and I find handles MS Office files better than MS Office 2008.

[scooterscot]

Once you switch to Mac you'll never look back...

Just lets hope the rest don't crack...

[blacjac]

Sorry, never got back to let you all know the result.

I bought a 20" I MAC, as the 24 would not fit in the space I had linned up.

I found it to be a good, shopping experience - the guy I dealt with went through all my concerns, showed me examples for my questions, let me play with it. Didn't oversell let me save docs and slides and spreadsheets import to a windows laptop, all sorts of helpful. Spent an hour with me.

I also bought the wireless hard drive at the same time, which didn't work, and when I took it back there was no quibble, and they refunded the full amount to a gift card.
I've been using the thing for a couple of weeks, including working from home on docs and sending them back and forth and logging remotely onto client co systems with Safari and found everything to be fine and dandy

I have been a happy little Hypno

Personally I hate it when they do this and insist on the cash.

[HYpno27]

Sorry, never got back to let you all know the result.

I bought a 20" I MAC, as the 24 would not fit in the space I had linned up.

I found it to be a good, shopping experience - the guy I dealt with went through all my concerns, showed me examples for my questions, let me play with it. Didn't oversell let me save docs and slides and spreadsheets import to a windows laptop, all sorts of helpful. Spent an hour with me.

I also bought the wireless hard drive at the same time, which didn't work, and when I took it back there was no quibble, and they refunded the full amount to a gift card.

I've been using the thing for a couple of weeks, including working from home on docs and sending them back and forth and logging remotely onto client co systems with Safari and found everything to be fine and dandy

I have been a happy little Hypno

[daviejones]

The Apple shops usually have at least one person that we could call a "super user", and who has the ability to answer most of your questions, unlike PC Woerld, where the advisors can only just walk and chew gum at the same time!!

[Peter Loew]

Off to the Mac shop in Southampton tomorrow for a chat about it all. I'm hoping their "Genius" knows more than the numpties at PC Worls intentional

Any result?

[HYpno27]

Off to the Mac shop in Southampton tomorrow for a chat about it all. I'm hoping their "Genius" knows more than the numpties at PC Worls intentional

[NickFitz]

Yes, I thought NeoOffice was amazingly good, the only thing that put me off NeoOffice is that it only has 2 developers, or something like that!

NeoOffice is the Mac port of OpenOffice.org (to give it its full name), so NeoOffice actually has as many developers as are working on OOo, plus two who integrate it with the Mac's native UI.

[Peter Loew]

I keep a copy of Office 2000 on a Windows VM to handle all those occasional niggly little compatibility things. Otherwise NeoOffice (currently 2.2.2) does the job mightily well.

I don't really care if they have 2 devs or 200. They seem to push out the updates fairly often.

I won't be lashing out for MSO for OS X anytime soon.

I used to keep Office 2007 on a Parallels VM too, but decided that since I never use it, I'd remove the VM.

I didn't lash out for MSO either It's a horrid piece of software that is so buggy (esp Excel) that it amazes me how MS could have released it in this state. I can't even open certain CSVs in Excel without it crashing every time. Absurd.

[bogeyman]

Yes, I thought NeoOffice was amazingly good, the only thing that put me off NeoOffice is that it only has 2 developers, or something like that! That said, I am trying out Office 2008 and can confirm that it's not very good compared to the 2004 version. Give it a couple of updates and SPs and it'll be sweet though.

I use a Macbook Pro at work and use Merlin for creating project schedules, Bento for keeping a Projects database, and Office 2008 for the usual stuff. What's great is that most apps on a Mac can export to common file types like XML, MS Project, Excel, CSV etc. Go for it you won't look back.

P

I keep a copy of Office 2000 on a Windows VM to handle all those occasional niggly little compatibility things. Otherwise NeoOffice (currently 2.2.2) does the job mightily well.

I don't really care if they have 2 devs or 200. They seem to push out the updates fairly often.

I won't be lashing out for MSO for OS X anytime soon.

[Peter Loew]

Yes, I thought NeoOffice was amazingly good, the only thing that put me off NeoOffice is that it only has 2 developers, or something like that! That said, I am trying out Office 2008 and can confirm that it's not very good compared to the 2004 version. Give it a couple of updates and SPs and it'll be sweet though.

I use a Macbook Pro at work and use Merlin for creating project schedules, Bento for keeping a Projects database, and Office 2008 for the usual stuff. What's great is that most apps on a Mac can export to common file types like XML, MS Project, Excel, CSV etc. Go for it you won't look back.

P

[bogeyman]

Go for it.

I do quite a bit of Windows dev but have been a Mac user for a couple of years now.

I used to keep a couple of Windows boxes but they never get powered up nowadays.

VMWare's Fusion is superb for running Windows or Linux in a VM. The integration between your everyday OS X stuff and your Windows stuff is nearly seemless.

I have some Windows apps I can't live without: Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Quick Books. Everything else is done on the Mac.

Currently have a 24" iMac with 4Gb and an external firewire RAID. It's the older style iMac with the matte screen.

Throw away the 'Mighty Mouse' that comes with it though - it's utter shyte.

I use a wireless Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000, but the new flashy Logitech mouse works well also - just not with the built-in blue-tooth.

p.s. NeoOffice is a port of Open Office which does most of what MS Office does, for free. It's very good.

[bellymonster]

A bit naughty but I downloaded OSX 10 from bittorrent and ran it within the free VMWare server product. It was a bit slow but you could get the feel for the mac os without shelling out a fortune.

Might be worth it to see if you cn get on with it ok.

[Diver]

SOB SOME

Switch Off Brain, Switch On Mac,Eureka!