I made the switch.

i'm using a mac with the microscope/camera setup i'm working with... i can handle the bling-bling microscope and associated equipment fine, but i'm flying by the seat of my pants with that damn computer :lol: you're not alone!

 

Welcome to Macintosh

This is the message that used to greet users of the original Mac in 1984 along with a smiling Mac. I like the idea of the Mac Mini. I bought a MacBook last December and run it on my desk with a Samsung 17" LCD monitor. I've been a regular Mac user since October, 1984.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hv74656 @ 2007 11 13 21:52) [snapback]539284[/snapback]</div>

Have you given up on Safari already?

 

When you download Firefox there should be a disk image on your desktop. Click on that and a window will open up with a graphic asking you to drag the Firefox image and drop it in your applications folder. Do that.

Now if you want it in your dock (the row of Icons (pictures) across the bottom of your screen, open your applications and choose the right hand side view that is column view. Click on Firefox once to select it. Now drag the large picture of Firefox that appears on the right hand side down to the dock and drop it anywhere in the row you want Firefox to be.

How you can open Firefox from the dock. (Those icons in the dock are aliases of your applications.)

 

The only real "must use" features, IMO, are iLife (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, etc). They really understand how to organize your entire personal life much better than anything i've seen on PC - i especially like iPhoto, as i add probably in excess of 1000 pictures a month, and it really makes organizing them easy.

 

Best time-waster on my iMac is Photo Booth. Making faces & using effects are good for a few laughs each time I try it. (And no, I will not post my John Travolta in Hairspray look-alike photo.)

 

I bought a Gateway quad-core Q6600 just over three weeks ago from Office Depot for $899 with a $150 mail-in rebate. It's an Office Depot-specific model, and the rebate was offered the first and third week it was for sale (now in the 4th week - maybe they'll have the rebate again next week?). I've been quite happy with it, running it almost exclusively for the Folding@Home distributed computing project, 24/7 with 100% CPU utilization. But it's very quiet and runs the CPUs about 10 degrees Centigrade less than the maximum spec for the Q6600.

It's a Vista Home Premium, and I assume you'd want to use XP for your engineering software.

CompUSA is going to have a 'Black Friday' special on a gamers quad core system bundle including a monitor and an ATI 2600 graphics card for $999 with mail-in-rebate - it's one of the 'early bird' specials. You can get advance info on some 'black Friday' specials through the www.techbargains.com site - there's a link near the top left hand side of the page.

edit: I just took a look at the scanned ad on Techbargains again - it's an Acer computer, no model number shown in the ad, with an Acer 24" wide screen monitor, AL2416W, and it's an 'in store only' special on Friday, 5 am to noon. I have that monitor.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hv74656 @ 2007 11 15 13:05) [snapback]540180[/snapback]</div>

Well, that really sucks. I'm sorry to hear it. I had similar issues on my now-three-generations-ago iMac, with pc stuff just plain not working, but I thought that had been fixed by now. Apparently not. I kept the mac for its communication skills and good looks. (OK, so I'm a sucker for eye candy) I leave the number-crunching to the pc, and not connecting it to the net seems the simplest and most effective way of securing the critical data. I can highly recommend Seanix, if that helps you.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hv74656 @ Nov 15 2007, 03:05 PM) [snapback]540180[/snapback]</div>

Sorry to hear that. I have a MacBook pro and have used BootCamp & XP extensively for engineering work (including USB hardware). No problems with compatibility. Something doesn't sound right. I rarely have crashes on the OS X side either. Almost all are Safari choking on some wierdo JavaScript stuff.

 

I used to have huge problems with the Windows 3.1 emulator that ran under IBM's OS2 PC operating system in the early to mid 90's. While most of the Microsoft Office suite and the Netscape Internet browser worked fine, almost any other Windows software just didn't work at all. IBM's support response to me essentially said "It works the way we programmed it, and we're not going to change it just so that it will work". When they came out with a major revision to OS2 in 1996, I tried to upgrade my laptop, but it turned out that the upgrade software installation kit was missing a critical file, so I had a completely useless piece of hardware.

I worked for a consulting division of IBM at that time - our division replaced all our laptops for ones with the Windows OS because our clients were using it, and required that we use compatible software when working at their sites. Eventually, IBM dropped OS2 entirely.

So I'm not surprised that Apple's Windows emulator doesn't fully support every Windows application package, but from what I understand, it works much better than my old OS2 Windows emulator!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jeannie @ Nov 15 2007, 11:39 PM) [snapback]540416[/snapback]</div>

BootCamp is not an emulator.

All Macs built since January 2006 use Intel processors and chipsets.

BootCamp is two things. First it provides support for the traditional PC BIOS. This is done, as most versions of Windows don't support EFI yet. EFI is the new, upcoming, Intel designed, BIOS replacement. Second it provides drivers for a few Mac specific hardware components (IR port, iSight camera, video card). All the other Mac hardware is "generic" PC hardware (USB, SATA, etc).

So an Intel Mac should be as compatible as any other PC system.

 

Thanks for the info, n8kwx - I haven't used an Apple computer in this century, so I didn't realize the switch to Intel chips meant that Macs can run Windows 'directly' as opposed through an emulator.

So the OP should be able to 'activate' XP, and just hasn't found the right tech-support person to resolve it?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hv74656 @ Nov 15 2007, 01:05 PM) [snapback]540180[/snapback]</div>

Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal Personal Technology columnist, just published a shopping guide for buying a Mac.

Here's a Mac FAQ if You're Looking to Buy a Computer

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hv74656 @ Nov 15 2007, 04:05 PM) [snapback]540180[/snapback]</div>

wow, you're fickle :lol:

 

I think it's funny how RV's are always named like they're fast (Pace Arrow, Bounder, etc.) and Apple's latest OS's are named after fast animals...

My year old Mini has Cheetah or Tiger, or some swift feline animal on it, and I can't even remember THAT...System 7.0.1 or System 7.1 or 8.5 or whatever (like the good old days, when Apple still had Computer in its name) makes a bit more sense to me.

When it's good, Apples industrial design does make the package more appealing, but it's not always that great, really, and as far as usability goes, I don't know, the PC I have is just about the same in most regards, except price (even though Windows XP Home looks like a cludgy version of Apple's System 9).

I owned one of those Mac 'cubes' that were supposed to be silent but mine still had a cooling fan in there somewhere and wasn't...this Mini is indeed virtually silent (except occasionally for the HD) and that's probably the biggest benefit for home use...not hearing that whirring noise when at the machine or when someone else is using it.