Ok, so my 5 year old netbook is getting on a bit. I'v been lusting over a new laptop (a Mac ideally) but putting it off for ages, other boring stuff coming first. Then yesterday the Mrs sprung it on me that she has bought me a MacBook Air I cant wait for it to arrive, but in the meantime, anyone got any PC > Mac migrating tips for a newbie? Any decent Mac forums?

Cheers

Matt

Start fresh, I tried to migrate stuff from pc to mac but in the end just stuck with mac and read a few hints and tips in the mac magazine. Only thing I use PC based is office for mac. This is freely available on the net.

Yeah I'm thinking I'll start fresh. Didn't think about magazines, not bought one in years.

Its just turned up, she bought a MBP not a Air! Silly billy, still I'm not complaining.

Macrumors forums is very good for hints/tips/advice etc.

What sort of migration do you want to do? If it's just documents, photos, music, stick them on a memory stick and copy them across. Note that an external hard drive will likely not work as it needs to be formatted differently (which you can easily do). All memory sticks will work.

To transfer photos i just used photostream to get them from my pc to my iMac, for documents i used Dropbox as there was not too much i wanted to keep from my old pc.

I can thoroughly recommend iCreate magazine for all things Mac :yes:

http://www.icreatemagazine.com/

I personally think the pro's are better.

Enjoy it and don't be afraid to ask questions to other mac users. Don't fall into the hype of the fact that because you have a mac you should know everything already.

A good app I found was called 'cheat sheet' in the App Store. It installs and any application you have open on screen, this app allows you to hold the cmd key down and it will show you all the hot keys available to you for whatever you have selected!

I agree, I've got a MBP and wouldn't be without it! Much better than the MB airs in my opinion.

Getting used to a Mac is so much easier than you would think.

Ok, so my 5 year old netbook is getting on a bit. I'v been lusting over a new laptop (a Mac ideally) but putting it off for ages, other boring stuff coming first. Then yesterday the Mrs sprung it on me that she has bought me a MacBook Air I cant wait for it to arrive, but in the meantime, anyone got any PC > Mac migrating tips for a newbie? Any decent Mac forums?

Cheers

Matt

How have you been getting on with this?

Get used to being frustrated by the often incredibly unintuitive OSX for a while.

Check the price of the software you need before committing to buy the Mac.

You won't get to 'borrow' anyone's copy of Office so you'll be paying for the Mac version or using Open Office / Google Docs.

MS Office is a charitable loaner, I might even have one lying around............

The transition is easy but it'll take you a little time, I found a good VNC server was a problem but found a solution, most software has a mac port or equivalent. As to air vs pro she did you a massive favor, be grateful

I had NO issues using my external drive with Docs & Photos on used previously on a PC, it plugged in & accessed immediately & was able to put additional docs & photos to it.

As long as the external drive is formatted @ FAT32 & NOT @ NTSC you will have no problems utilising the contents between the 2 formats.

Word of note - ALWAYS eject any external drive from the MAC before using elsewhere as i accidentally found that you will get write errors to the drive if you dont, I ended up backing up contents to another drive i had, & reformatting the troublesome drive as FAT32. I did let the MAC format it, but then realised that the laptop wouldnt be able to see the contents - oops- :S

I will have problems going back to a PC now i have MBA, it is actually far easier, lot less troublesome & forced me to be more clever with what i download & store.

I think you mean NTFS, NTSC is the US version of PAL, SECAM etc

The problem with being forced to use FAT32 is the 4gb file sizes. If you've got a DVD rip of something bigger than 4GB, you can't get it onto the drive, which NTFS would let you do.

Getting on really well with it! I mean, in reality all I really do with a laptop is surf the net and listen to music/store pictures. It does all this effortlessly, I suspect it is massive overkill for my needs, but still, I wanted one lol. Going back to a windows pc does feel a bit retro now though lol.

I have recently got a gopro, so editing the videos could make better use of it, I have iMovie on here so I might give it a go and see what I can do with it. Also bought a apple tv (cheap from a mate) mainly so we can watch iPlayer and stuff on the tv but also handy for other things. As for office, I use google docs for everything anyway so thats no issue.

I'll update in a few months.

Cheers

Matt

Apple TV doesnt have iPlayer (unless its an ATV 2 jailbroken;))

Watch it on the MBP via the apple tv. I'v got sky down stairs, but we use it upstairs since we dont watch much tv up there its handy, plus the mrs watches some **** on netflix.