Contemplating the Switch - has questions

I'm interested in buying a Macbook Air, but before hand, I do have some questions for you guys to see if you can help me out.

1) This may be a bit arbitrary for various users, but I plan on mainly web surfing, a lot of writing, and maybe listening to music. How long will the battery last just from web surfing with 4-5 tabs open via Chrome, 1-2 Word documents open, and iTunes running? Estimates are fine

2) I've never actually used a 13.3" laptop before - would you guys say it's hard to switch? I've had five laptops - two Toshiba 17", two HP 15", and one Sony Vaio 15". Oh also, I'm a journalist of sorts.

3) Is Microsoft Office included within the price for a Macbook Air or is that something I'll have to buy separate? If it's separate, I'll probably just use OpenOffice - which brings me to another question: both OpenOffice and Word works the same on the iOS in contrast to Windows 7? Sorry if that sounded noob as hell, I've just never used iOS before; I don't know much about it.

4) How much of the 128gb of hard drive space is actually available at the beginning?

5) I have a bunch of movies and music on an external hard drive - will the Macbook Air be able to play those movies and music from the start or will I have to format those files somehow? If so, how?

6) What's the most common "problem" that arises from the Macbook air. By that I mean is there a common heating issue? Noise? Various hardware giving out for no reason?

7) Thanks for answering. One last one ~,o is there anything about either the Macbook Air, either hardware or software wise, that I should know? I've read most of the "switchers guides" already which were stickied at the front of the Mac forum.

 

1: I get around 4.5 - 5 hrs normally working similar to your list ( doing alot of video or flash your looking at 3 and change )

2: depends on what your doing, for basic internet not an issue

3: extra charge for Office if you require it ( OO is different in OSX than windows, less editing features )

4: about 70-80 gb free depending on recovery partition etc

5: possibly, you may need to reencode or use a different player app such as VLC

6: heating up, scratches and bending it for me ( im not exactly treating laptops like china dolls )

7: will take you a bit if time to get used to how OSX manages files and installs/ works with apps

 

I can't address all your questions, but I'll take a stab at a couple.

Resolution is what's important. The MBA's 1440x900 screen should suit you quite well.

I use Office for Mac at work and it's pretty close to what you get from Windows. I've tried Open Office, and it's just not the same. I would pony up for the Mac edition of MS Office. Alternatively, if you have a license for Windows Office and a copy of Windows, you could install them on the Mac via Boot Camp or run them on a virtual machine with Parallels or VMWare Fusion. That's what I do if I need quick access to Office on my personal Mac.

As far as hardware goes, the Air is little different than a Windows-based ultrabook. What you should do, though, is order your Air with 8 GB of RAM. While 4 GB is probably enough for what you'll be doing, if you end up running a virtual machine, the extra RAM will come in handy. Further, the RAM is soldered onto the logic board (motherboard) so you can't change it later.

The biggest change is going to be moving from Windows to OS X. It's pretty easy to acclimate yourself, though. As long as you've read the guides here and elsewhere, you should be good to go not long after you've unboxed your machine.

Good luck.

 

depends whats going on in the web surfing and iTunes... 3 to 5 hours probably

you should probably check one out in person

Office is a separate program to buy. You can use LibreOffice, it runs very good and is the true successor to OpenOffice since the name was basically 'stolen' in a way. Of course these run basically the same on all OSes, so you should find it easy enough to use.

You may be mistaken about something though. iOS is an OS for iPhones and iPads and such... it is NOT the OS running on a Mac. Your Macbook Air will be running OS X, which runs Mac software, and does NOT run iOS software.

with everything thats installed from the factory I think it'll be less than 100, but have never checked.

format files? not sure what that would even be. If your files are a type that can be used... sure, they'll work right away. It depends on file type, not what OS you had them on before. Say like.. mp3 files, or m4a or whatever... if its wma/wmv files they'll play after you install a plug in.
if your external drive is formatted as NTFS (the file system format on the drive, not the data stored on it) then the Mac can read the drive but not write to it. If its FAT32 or exFat then it can read/write to it fine.

problems like that would be uncommon... there shouldn't be any common issues besides the obvious things that would affect any laptop... like don't smother it by running it on soft surfaces or anything else that will retain heat around it... don't throw it against the wall, it could break... that kind of thing.

if your new to OSX, you need to give it time. You will be very used to how Windows does things, and assume that thats just a computer... when its not. You will need to learn how to use OSX... it is not Windows, so try to be a bit open minded and not get stuck in a paradigm in how a computer should work.

 

dont think osx is different from windows in many ways that it will require time to get used to. Sure some things wont be in the same place you find it in windows but it shouldnt make a break your experience.

Finder is pretty much like explorer; you go to applications and you click it to launch it; there are no special things to set up. So ye, should be easy.

 

One thing to note is that you're going to become spoiled by Apple's trackpad. Its slick operation and gestures (within OS X anyway) are unparalleled. The experience is less enjoyable if you're running your Mac with Windows via Boot Camp, but that's mainly on account of Apple providing only very basic drivers.

 

thats a major problem for me

I was never a spoiled brat, but now...

 

Thanks a lot for all the information. I'll be sure to check out the Macbook Air in person before I take the dive, but as of now, it sounds really tempting to just use a laptop instead of worrying about drivers and stuff.

Again, thanks.

 

I'm not sure what you mean about having issues with drivers as you never indicated that you were going to run Windows as the primary OS. You actually don't really have to worry about drivers at all in OS X. I have yet to install any drivers or manufacturer specific software to get hardware up and running on my Mac under OS X (and this goes back to my early 2011 13" MBP too). All I have ever done is add the hardware to my system and OS X figures everything out whether it is a USB dual-layer DVD burner, HP wi-fi printer, thunderbolt hard drive, my Xbox 360's USB HD-DVD drive, digital camera, Droid X, or the number of bluetooth headphones, keyboards, receiver, and mice I have used over the years. OS X saw them all and worked without having to install specific drivers (though OS X did have to download a 5MB driver package for my printer but it did that automatically).

 

indeed my father has a HP printer around 10 years old, and surely, plugged, it installed the drivers and I printed.

 

I never had to manually install drivers for anything on my MBP while in OSX. Just never had to think about it. While I had some driver issues with Windows XP on it (for a while, the trackpad was basically unusable; Apple eventually updated it so that it worked just fine, just with fewer multitouch gestures than in OSX), I never had to search out third party drivers there either.

As for word processing programs, you should really consider Pages (Apple's own word processor) in the Apple App store. It's $19, which is a whole heck of a lot easier to swallow than Office Home and Student. And I've used both OpenOffice and LibreOffice, and while they do the job okay, I find that they both are a little bit of "you get what you pay for"...and they're free. If you don't need a full Office suite, just a word processor, Pages is a muuuuuuuch better deal than MS Office.

 

The main issue with Pages is that it can still mess up the formatting of Word documents and its automatic formatting doesn't seem as in-depth as Words. When writing a really long paper, Word can keep track of the different sections automatically and put them in a table of contents while also automatically labeling figures/charts and putting them in the TOC as well. From what I have experienced, and maybe I am using Pages incorrectly, its ability to do this isn't as in-depth as MS Word.