Advice or New Mac User

wdw2003

Following an earlier thread, my daughter has ordered a MacBook Pro. Knowing pretty much nothing about the world of Mac, I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me what she needs to get next to transition her computing life as smoothly as possible.

In program terms, the main things she currently uses are - Word, Excel, MS Messenger, Photo Elements, Hotmail and of course Facebook.

Is there anything she'll need to buy to carry on as before? I'm thinking Office for Mac 2011 and maybe a photo manipulation program, but all she needs for that is something pretty basic. Presumably Hotmail and Facebook are as before, being internet-based.

free4440273

Just remember to install a decent anti-virus/malware package/

http://www.avast.com/mac-edition

^avast is very good /

Enterprise-D

free4440273 wrote: »

Just remember to install a decent anti-virus/malware package/

http://www.avast.com/mac-edition

^avast is very good /

Yes, definitely worth installing for those two viruses, which also require you to pretty much install them yourself, with your consent. :rotfl:

scottishblondie

Not much point in anti-virus really, but feel free to install it if you want!

I'd recommend the following programs:
- Adium for instant messaging, works with MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk etc, way better than the Microsoft client.
- Either Open Office or MS Office for word processing etc
- GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) for image manipulation etc
- Skitch is a really useful little application that makes it easy to take, annotate and store screenshots for when you want to keep a record of something etc.
- VLC is brilliant for playing videos and DVDs. Of course there is built in software to do this but I prefer VLC.
- Safari is the built in browser, but I prefer Firefox. It's a personal choice, there are plenty of browsers available.

This article contains a lits of the top 100 mac applications, and the website itself is full of helpful info for mac users.

littleowl

All she will need is Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac; iWork which has a word processor among other stuff. Those are all I bought when I started with an iMac several years ago. I use Mail (included in Mac OS).
Why clutter up the system with Microsoft programmes? I did in the beginning because they were familiar but soon junked them.

lucylucky

free4440273 wrote: »

Just remember to install a decent anti-virus/malware package/

http://www.avast.com/mac-edition

^avast is very good /

That did make me laugh:D

jayme1

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/ just watch some of the videos for the basics.

use GIMP for free photoshop
growl for very good notifications
spotify for music
I would also go firefox for internet over the built in safari or at the very least chrome.
open office for free word, excel, powerpoint, but tbh you could just use something like google docs or even microsoft office web apps, therefore zero to install and she can work from home or uni with ease no more 'damn I forgot my memory stick' or all the docs ar just simply backed up
VLC for better video playback
skype for free calls

for email the best interface for hotmail is the website, but you can set it up in mail.app if you want and you will get a nice growl notification when you get a new mail, you can also use skydrive to back up important work and also get live mesh for mac to automatically back up specific folders (windows version of dropbox but has 5GB of storage compared to 2GB)
but personally I would get gmail and integrate the mail calendar and contacts, therefore all the appointments would be synced with the computer and cloud (and a mobile if she has one), and if the laptop went missing she wouldnt lose any info/calendar. same if she used google docs/office web apps her work is always backed up.

there are 2 view points for installing antivirus on a mac 1. is that macs dont have any viruses, and that is true so you dont need it for that, but 2. if she regulary emails or shares files with friends or if she is taking a memory stick into university everyday she could be carrying a windows virus, though it wont affect her pc it could infect her friends', but again if emailing people the files then gmail and hotmail scans the files for viruses and the windows PCs should have antivirus on them anyway.

I'm sure I'll think of more

you can use MSN in the hotmail website

wdw2003

Thanks folks. That's given me plenty to think about. It'll be nice not to use an anti-virus. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.

spud17

It'll be nice not to use an anti-virus.

If that's your main criterion, you could always use Linux, and save yourself hundreds of pounds.

thescouselander

I'd recommend getting Onyx to do maintenance tasks in order to keep the machine nice and quick.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html


Also Perian is a very good addition for Quicktime allowing a wider range of video formats to be played:

http://perian.org/

alternatively VLC is also very good - I use both.


Wouldn't bother with anti virus - its a complete waste of time and resources at the moment.

knightstyle

Set up the dashboard and download this onto it : http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/ It gives at a glance lots of info about the Macbook, temps, memory use, network, battery health etc.