Apple Mac G5

[MtnDewMan]

Well I recently went off the deep end (yep, I mean my mind) and jumped to the other side and am now an owner of a Mac G5 computer.

So .... being relatively new to it all I found the experience so far pretty gratifying. I managed to get my data over to the mac without too much trouble. I am upset that Quicken doesn't transfer very well, so will stick with that one in Windows. The biggest purchase with it was Aperture ... that is a fun program to work with.

Sooo, that is basically my whole Christmas for myself

Anyone use the Mac (I know Nikki and Matt do) and what are your tips and tricks and favorite applications?

 

[wrightme43]

Dont know a thing about it. I am happy for you though. Everybody seems to say they are great.

 

[mattseattle]

for IM chat and all I use Proteus - it's like Trillian but for the mac. It has AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc. built into one application.
For email I use Entourage - same as Outlook but rebranded for the mac.
For photo importing/editing I just use iPhoto - it's awesome and has a ton of feature.
I like Safari for surfing but I also use FireFox.
I also use Sherlock quite a bit for information lookup - phone book, stuff like that.
NetFlix Freak - is a cool program to use if you have a Netflix account. You can manage your Queue and things like that.

Hmmm - what else.....I'm still somewhat new to the Mac and OS X but so far I'm really impressed with everything.

Let me know if you have any other questions or if you find any favorite apps.

 

[mattseattle]

does your have iSight and FrontRow built in?

We bought the model right before this one and now wished I had waited a little while but that is the way it always is with computers.

 

[NaH2O]

I also use Safari for surfing. Chuck, check out this thread: OSX Tiger Questions. I think you will love it once you get used to it.

 

[Krish]

Congrats Chuck (I think ) I really have no idea what you just got, but best of luck learning it!

 

[dgasmd]

I bought a new G5 about 1.5 years ago when I was to the point of sitting in the prenatal position in a corner in a dark room after drinking a bottle of unidentified mexican rum after dealing with years of misery with my PC. My previous PC was a very very good machine and probably has enough physical capacity to run aeveral third world country's economies. That is another story.

I will admit that at the begining it was not only intimidating, but somewhat frustrating because for a lot of simple tasks it was completely different. Not bad, just different and unknown to me. Yes, I will admit I was one of those that even called tech support to ask them how in the heck do I open the CD room drive!!!!!!

Within a couple of weeks of getting the hang of it, it has been smooth sailing since. Very very easy to work with and no more problems with freezig up, lock ups, etc. I am not a computer expert by any means, and if anything, I am probably very very far from it. Most programs I use are the same ones I used before. I still use Photoshop CS for picture editing, imovie for video, MSWord, and I use Netscape for the browser. They all have their MAC versions and are very nice to use, except for iMovie which is proprietary to MAC.

The best thing I have found is that even the same programs are so much easier to figure out even when you don't know how to do something. I just couldn't tell you how much happier I am with this computer. I seriously wished I knew how to do some more things in it because sometimes I feel like I bought the space shuttle version of computers to fly a 3 block distance. I seriously wished I knew more about video editing and picture editing.

The best thing for m is that there is a Mac Store at the mall 2 miles from me and they have a bunch of free classes running all the time about the different programs. I am yet to make it to one though. I will also get a laptop the moment the G5 laptop comes out.

 

[MtnDewMan]

I am glad everyone has had great experiences with the mac ... that's cool. This one has all of the bells and whistles. Yes it is isight ready, I don't have the isight camera yet though. What is frontrow? I guess I will have to do a search on that one.

Do you like Entourage over Apple Mail? I ordered Office 2004 through a work program, much discounted price. I also use quicken home and business and since I can't find a cheap program for the mac, I have to use it in a virtual pc environment (Virtual PC 7) that allows me to run Windows XP applications. Aperture is good, but overpriced for sure.

I do a lot of ftping as you can imagine with this site. I found a great program called Transmit 3 which does that very well.

Matt, you say you use iphoto for editing? I can't for the life of me figure out how to resize an image in that program? What am I doing wrong???

Nikki, thanks for the link, I will check that out for sure.

I started out a Mac guy with the first color mac that came out, the Mac LC ... I went to PC for many years and have come full circle .. it feels strange. Wish the keyboard was more like the PC style, seems small.

 

[dgasmd]

I also use Transmit for my file uploading to my site. Drag and drop easily.

I was trying to use entourage and/or mac mail, but I oculd not figure out for the life of me how to gt my netscape email to come on in it. I gave up and use netscape's mail. If you know how, shine some light on a brother..............

 

[reedman]

We've lost another to the Dark Side....just kidding. I hear apples are great machines and they are finally competitive in price. Glad you're enjoying Chuck.

 

[mattseattle]

What is frontrow? I guess I will have to do a search on that one.

Do you like Entourage over Apple Mail?

Matt, you say you use iphoto for editing? I can't for the life of me figure out how to resize an image in that program? What am I doing wrong???

I was always a PC/Windows guy till we bought this iMac G5. Chuck - did you buy the iMac G5 or the Power Mac G5?

The new IMac G5 comes with the iSight built in and FrontRow is sort of like Windows Media. It comes with a remote and you can view pictures, movies, etc. through the software. Ours came out before that though. The Power Mac doesn't come with it built in so if you bought that then that is why.

I like Entourage a lot better than Apple Mail. I just like the lay out, junk filters, etc. better. I also tried Eudora for a while but just did not like the speed at which it would decode attachments.

It's funny that you mention about resizing photos as I just finally figured that out the other day. You bring up the photo you want to resize and under SHARE there is an option for EXPORT. Once you click Export the dialog box shows you the different options for resizing, file types, or you can send directly to a web page. The way I do it is I have a folder for my originals (usually 2048 x 1024) and then I create another folder for the resized images and when I export/resize them I just save them in the other folder. It was not the most straight forward way but it works and works well once you get used to it.

I hope that helps.

 

[MtnDewMan]

Thanks for the iphoto tip, I will check it out.

I got the Powermac Quad G5 So that is why that stuff wasn't part of the package.

 

[dpaynter]

If you haven't already, check out Spotlight (the icon in the upper right hand corner). Type in a word or phrase and get all occurences of it in documents, email, photo labels, etc. It works almost instantly for me even on a 4 year old mac (Quicksilver, 867 G4).

 

[mattseattle]

oh the Quad G5 - lucky bastard! sweet machine, fer sure....

 

[Elmo18]

Aye...we surely have lost another one....PC's are just so flexible.


- Ilham

 

[MtnDewMan]

This one is pretty darn flexible as well

 

[mattseattle]

Chuck - don't get drawn into the Windows versus Mac debate!

I was just reading the Quad G5 review - sounds like an awesome machine. It's equal to having 4 processors - I doubt you'll have any lag doing any video or picture editing. My single processor G5 is fast so can't imagine how quick yours is.

which monitor did you buy with it? don't make me drool....

 

[MtnDewMan]

I will try not to succumb to the debate, I actually use both mac and windows so there are always pros and cons for each

I am using the 20" Apple Cinema Display

 

[NaH2O]

I am using the 20" Apple Cinema Display

Man! I'm officially jealous.

I have both a PC and this Mac, although the PC is very outdated. My 4 year old can use both, too. I think it will be beneficial for her.