Considering getting a Macbook, but I need to know a few things if possible please?

Hi,

Apologise for the length of the post, but I couldn't find conclusive answers to most of these problems by searching. Hopefully you can help me out with some of them and I can get one step closer to be coming a Mac User as well as a Windows PC user

First off I do not have the spare cash for a MBP at the moment, plus I want to move away from the 15.4" Acer laptop I have at the moment to a smaller 13.3" laptop. Hence why a Macbook is one of my options.

Any laptops at similar size and build quality all seem to come out at around the same cost as the Macbook (As I can get it with Student discount for about 1 more month, which makes Macbook start at £600).

I consider myself to be a very experienced PC user, and I have zero trouble using Windows, I find it simplistic, I can get anything done in it.


How I would use the Macbook

1) Mainly for everyday use Email, Web browsing, storing my photos etc when I am not working on things

2) Some work including Photoshop work (connected to external monitor), I use this primarily to create graphics for websites, to design my layouts before coding them etc

3) When travelling out and about such as to visit my girlfriend at weekends. I need a computer for general use that is portable. Hence wanting a small size.

4) I would not use my Macbook for actually coding websites, as I prefer Visual Studio 2005 / 2008 to create my data driven websites. For this I will set up a Dual Boot so I can get into Windows XP. I don't see the need to install Vista any time soon. But being able to then go to any sites once online and test them on a Mac in Safari will be useful for me.


My questions are:

1) I always hear about how a Mac is simple to use and gets the same things done but with less "faffing around" ("Messing around"). I don't see how anything could actually be more simple than Windows to use...Is there any examples somebody could give me?

I don't think Windows has hardly ever crashed on my since Windows XP SP2, you can leave it running for ages and come across no problems, and drivers are also simple to find for most things, and 99% of common devices seem to have drivers built into XP and Vista.

Could somebody explain exactly how they are better if you are already extremely competent in Windows. I can see that this is probably aimed more towards those less experience computer users???

2) I plan to use OS X mainly for everyday use such as web browsing and E-Mail applications. On a Macbook do the integrated mail / calender applications run really smoothly and feel quite lightweight? I use Office 2007 on my PC Laptop and it runs great apart from Outlook 2007 which feels slugish.

3) What is the deal with sharing data between a Macbook and my existing PC's etc? Can I use an external USB 2.0 drive formatted in FAT32 file system? I understand Mac OS X can read from an NTFS drive but can't write to it?

Will OS X and Windows be able to access each others files that are on a different partition if the same drive if one is NTFS and the other is the Mac OS X file system?

Also my reasons I would like a Macbook

1) Apple brand is attractive and stylish - Yes I won't lie, I like my things to look good

2) I would love to have a proper go of OS X, I have tried it in the shops but you can never get a feel for how it is to own a Macbook

3) Generally interested and excited about using OS X as I have heard so much about it

4) It's a change from Windows

5) I can still boot into Windows for those essential apps such as Visual Studio 2005 / 2008

 

The macbook can do all of the things you want it to do perfectly fine.

To get at your questions

OSX is as you said, less messing around. For me its kinda hard to explain, but like, one example I can think of offhand is making notes.

If I want to copy some text from a site, and save it on the desktop, in windows you do:
highlight text -copy text - open notepad(either start>run, or find it) - paste text - save as, choose location - name - close notepad

in OSX, if I want to do the same thing
highlight text - click and drag to desktop

OSX automatically makes the file, basically like a .txt

For me, its a really useful feature, cause I take notes and stuff often. Maybe its a weak example, but its an example nonetheless. I'd say its hard to explain, and once you use it, youll see its better.

2)I used to use thunderbird in windows, and like firefox it takes up a lotta resources. OSX has mail, takes up nothing noticeable, and it works great. iCal can take a couple seconds to launch, but it works well, although I dont keep it open all the time, like i do mail.

3) Uhhhhh, If you use windows file sharing (samba/SMB), you can access those shared pcs perfectly fine, and read/write data to them. They can access your shared stuff on the mac as well, if you turn on sharing.

OSX, out of the box, can read NTFS, but not write. If you get NTFS-3g, you can read and write to NTFS, though its a bit slower (USB2 speeds).

In windows (eg bootcamp) I think theres software you can get that lets you read and write to mac partitions (HFS), but I just use HFSexplorer, which lets me browse my OSX partitions, and extract data as I need it.

If you make your bootcamp partition FAT32, you can read/write in OSX natively. Most usb sticks and external drives, are formatted in FAT32, so you can read/write to them fine.

I think you should be fine in OSX, and you may end up doing things in OSX, that you thought you would only do in windows.

Me and a lot of other users, initially said that we'd go into windows to use certain programs, but the only time I go into my bootcamp drive, is to play games. You can use VMware to boot up your drive while running OSX, and still get pretty much full functionality of windows, while still runing OSX.

One of the things that I dislike about OSX, is finder. I think its a pos, and I've been using Path Finder, since the day I got my MBP. To me, its way better. Finder just doesn't do it for me.

Hopefully I answered some questions, although its a long post ;p probably forgot to say some stuff, but yea.

 

I think that is quite a good example of how some handy features are built into Mac OS X. I might try coding something similar in Windows actually haha.

I'm gunna go to the shop again today and have another look at the Macbooks and see what I think. I've noticed they now seem to have a gray colour plastic on the inside around the keyboard, didn't this used to be white? I'd assume its to reduce pitting even thought it doesn't look as good? (P.S I am also going to try out that cool text copy feature lol).

What I am thinking about in terms of sharing files is when I create my bootcamp partition, I may not know exactly how much space Windows is going to need in the future, do I need to allocate this space when first creating the partition? As with Windows based PC's i've had trouble re-sizing partitions after they have been in use for a while.

Do any Windows applications such as Office 2007 and Visual Studio need to be installed to the Windows partition on the HDD? If so do any files used by them need to also be installed on the Windows partition or can I use my main OS X parition to store most of my data?

It doesn't matter as much as long as I can re-size the partitions when needed, but as said this have proved to be a problem in the past. Maybe bootcamp has a reliable feature built in that can do it?


Also for backing up: If I want to backup to an external Hard Drive can this be done if the External drive is formatted to NTFS? I would want some easy backup software I can run from OS X that will backup both my Windows and Mac parition if possible (But using a seperate App in Win and OS X would be okay too).

Does Leopard come with a built in backup utility that saves the backup to an external drive?

Sorry for all of the questions. I really appreciated it.

 

Well, I havn't resized my windows partition. Technically, I think it should just be a matter of resizing it, but I don't know how well it works in practice.

What I know does work, is making a backup of the windows partition, erasing it, resizing, then restoring the backup. Heard other members using this method, and it supposedly works. I have a 20gb partition set up for windows (xp), and its more then enough. If you were just planning on using some word/office docs, id say 10, or 15gb would be plenty. But to answer your question, yes you can resize the partition once its made. OSX has a built in tool to resize/create partitions, and its all you need.

Theres Office 08 for OSX, so you could have that installed on your OSX partion. Visual studio, would be windows only, so thatd have to be on the windows partition. Accessing the OSX partition in windows, like I said it can be done, and if you want to spend money, I'm pretty sure you can get native HFS support.

Leopard has Time Machine, which is a really good backup program, makes backing up seamless and you don't have to give it any thought.
As for backing up to NTFS, I don't know if time machine will let you select ntfs partitions as the backup source. Might want to reformat the drive, or get a new one. Or make it Fat32, and windows/osx could access it natively.

But yea, all the resizing should be fine. Using time machine on an NTFS, might come into some problems. Would probably just be easiest to reformat to fat32/hfs.

 

I'd probably keep my Music on my OS X partition and all of my photographs too and just get a seperate HDD to backup these and all my other OS X files.

In Windows the only files I will need to save will be ones used in Visual Studio, and also some photoshop files. I will use Mac OS X to do photoshop work but may need to open them again in Windows version.

I already have CS2 for Windows but i'm going to get CS3 for Mac and own both. To do this could I store them directly to the Windows partition from inside the Mac CS3? Sorry if I seem to be repeating the questions but the compatibility of files is one of the most important things to me as I do some Windows development etc.

 

Not sure exactly what you're getting at >_>
Are you saying that you want to install the mac version of CS3, on your windows drive?

 

Lol nope, but after reading that quote I see how I was confusing lol, sorry about that.

I mean I want to work on files in Mac Photoshop, then go into Windows and use Windows Photoshop to continue to work on them. I want to be able to do this without replicating files. I.e I don't want to have to:

- Create the file in Mac, - Re-boot into my windows partition, - Then create a copy of the file to edit on Windows, - Then copy this to the Mac.

I just want to have 1 instance of the file that I can edit from both versions. I see you mentioned 3rd party apps to access files on the Mac HDD from Windows, but by using these does it directly access the file or make a copy on the windows drive before allowing you to open it?

 

Don't worry about it, you can edit the same Photoshop file in Windows and Mac OS X. File compatibility for the major ones are pretty good, as in Word Documents, JPEGs, PSDs, MP3s, etc. The same file works on both operating systems .

 

Sorry if this has been answered already but can you save files to the Mac partition from within Windows? Cheers guys.

Really looking forward to getting a Mac and about 99% sure i'll get one over a Dell.

 

I think your best bet, is to format the windows partion as FAT32. That way, you can read/write to it, in both windows and OSX.

And sam, yea lots of programs are cross platform, but he was asking how he could actually read/write to that file within windows AND osx. Not just if its compatibile.

The only disadvantage to FAT32, is that you cant have files bigger then 4GB~.(irc)

 

Yep you are correct. 4GB is the largest file size in FAT32, although programs such as Nero will automatically split into 4gb chunks if you were to rip say an 8gb Dual Layer DVD, so you can still do pretty much everything.

I doubt i'd be working with files over 4GB in photoshop anyway lol.
I do have a current external HDD with quite a few images etc that are about 7-8gb and its formatted in NTFS, but the type of files they are, I would never need them on the Mac anyway.

Still undecided on whether to get the middle spec Macbook but its kinda out of my price range at the moment, seems a lot to just get a DVD-RW when I don't really need the RAM (adding my own up to 2.5 - 3gb) or the processor upgrade (goes from 2.1 to 2.4ghz)

 

I was blanking out on the name of the program that let you access HFS parttions in windows, but its called Macdrive. Just installed it, and it seems like a good program.