Lori and I took the plunge and have switched over to a i-Mac. After 2 decades of troubled PC usage, and being constantly bombarded by Mac using friends, we drove over to the Apple store in Toronto and after being assured by the staff that our fears where mostly unfounded decided to take the plunge. Should be a bit of a learning curve, but one I'm looking forward to.

Frank

Welcome to the Mac world!

The main difference is on some keyboard shortcuts, the rest is pretty much the same!
I have been working with Mac and PC's since 1992, and Mac has always been much more user friendly! Now things are almost leveled


Rui

Hi Rui,

Are there any software programs you would recommend?

I'm going to try out our current Nikon Capture 4 image software program, if it works fine we'll continue to use it, if not we'll switch over to Apple's Apperture program. Are you using a dedicated Canon program or the i-photo-Aperture programs?

Frank

Hi Frank

Well, although you get iPhoto, I only use it to manage the photos.
I use (call it professional deformation!!) Adobe Photoshop CS2 to edit my photos/images (including the banner and thumbnail images of MOD's and Features). I am pretty comfortable with it - after all I have worked with it since release 2.0

You also should get Office for Mac (helpful, and you will have a PC/Mac files)
And if you are going to send files over to others, remember to save them with the file extension!
This is one of those things that Mac's always win (pun intended)! The resource fork file that is embedded always knows what file is it and what program should open it

I don't know your needs, but feel free to ask - if I can I will help


Rui

Wow, sorry I missed this post. I also want to welcome you to the world of Macs. Been using them forever (well since about 1984 when they came out...) and will never use anything else (I have a PC here, but that's more for playing obscure games because I don't wanna install Windows on my Mac). The learning curve is easily overcome as I know plenty of others who have switched and have had an easy time with no real regrets.

I agree with Rui- iPhoto is great for importing and managing your photos (I use it for that purpose and it had no problem recognizing my Nikon P5000), but Photoshop is the industry standard and very well supported for your actual manipulations. Office is good for all nearly all your other needs.

And if you want to get into 3D, the program I use (History With Dade, AFO, Admiralty instructions) is Cinema 4D. A fast program that has crashed on me less than five times in almost ten years of use.

The iMac is actually very powerful- I had always used tower Macs before, but the Core2 Duo iMacs do nearly everything I need for a fraction of the price and with excellent monitor built in, so when I upgraded from my G5, I bought an iMac. Believe me when I say that if this thing can handle the kind 3D stuff I throw at it, it can handle almost anything. My girl just got an iBook that is also the bee's knees, so if you ever want a lap top, I recommend the iBook. Enjoy and have fun!

Thanks Rui, Dade

We purchased the top of the line i-Mac, 3.06 Ghz, @GB 800 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM, 500GB hard drive with the 24" monitor. I have to say the large monitor is fantastic for opening up multiple screens at once. Simplest time we've ever had setting up a computer, from opening of the box to running in less than 5 minutes. We lost some of our i-tunes files in the switch but that was caused by us not following the instructions clearly displayed. I'll send an e-mail over to Apple, the've been really good in addressing lost music files in the past. Transfer of over 6000 photos with the use of an external hard drive was quick and painless. We now have to set up the Time Machine, which backs up changes to the files every hour to the external drive.

Frank

I had use a Mac way back in 1996 at Caterpillar when I was a tech writer, but never made the switch at home.

I did like using it, but having a PC at home back then was a little confusing switching back and forth.

I started off with a "portable" Mac SE when I was in college. When we went to computer aided sign making in 1990, all those programs were based off of CAD software so I switched over to pc. I've never really had any problems with mine. Of course with working on one all day, I never really got in the gaming and such when I got home.

Kenny