Looking for some new Mac advise.

Long Time PC User.

Hello Everyone I have been using PC's for over 10 years.
I was a Unix Engineer and programmer for 4 of those years and am Now a Project Manager.

I am writing this entry for some advice about purchasing a Mac.

I am in the market for a new machine that can act as a main hub for my wife and I.The needs I will have are DSLR photo Editing, Some HD video editing, and some light gaming(Diablo 3). I will also be using Itunes regularly and watching movies in HD on it.

The Mac has caught my eye because of its simplistic OS and reliability. I also like the fact that its not as vulnerable as a PC and just works. I used to get very involved in the troubleshooting with PC's but have always been familiar with a Unix/Linux Environment. I have also been an Iphone user since 2007.

The 2 mac's that I am considering are the 21.5 iMac and the 13.3 MBP.

I am leaning more towards the MBP 13.3 because of its power and mobility. I would purchase aftermarket memory to get bumped up to 8GB of Ram.

I have read many of the tutorials provided on here(Many Thanks).

First Question I have is for the applecare, where else can I buy this besides apple?

For example: Directly from apple costs $249 but from B&H it costs $190 is this the same 3 year plan. From the looks of it...it is but
how does this work? I have seen in the general use thread that you can buy it from Ebay but how Legit is this??

Second Question: How do a lot of the PC Users get over not having a backspace key. Its not critical to me but just wondering if there is a
way to customize the keyboard to substitute another key to make this happen....Also same for copying (PC ctrl-c ~~Mac Cmd-c) Any way to change or just get used to it?

Third Question: I have 2 Externals with about 3TB of Data on them. Most are all jpeg and movie files. For a Mac will I have to convert all of these so the OS x can read it?
From readings I think it will be plug and play but just looking for someone who has had some experience with this as I dont want to loose all my 3TB of data from being seen by my new Mac.

Thanks and Regards and I look forward to people opinions and comments.

-Koopa

 

Diablo 3 as well as many other games will have a hard time playing on a machine with an Intel HD 3000 (like the MBP 13)... but it should run fine on a current iMac.

no idea what "B&H" is... but watch out for applecare scams, as there are tons on ebay. They sell faked codes that will register correctly, then apple figure it out later on... to late to do anything, or they'll sell you a valid code, wait 2 months then return their package to apple for a pro-rated refund, and your warranty gets canceled, and since you didn't buy it from an authorized reseller, your just totally ripped off. I only buy Applecare from Apple or an authorized reseller.

You do have a backspace key... its int he same place as it always is, it just has different text printed on it.. it says "delete" but in the Mac world that means backspace. If you have a full sized keyboard that has delete key and backspace on it, they'll both work fine.... or on a smaller one you can Delete for a backspace, and fn+Delete for a delete. Its actually pretty easy, since it works like you'd normally expect, it just has a different word on it.
Your much better of taking the time to get used to the changes.... often you'll spend much more time trying to customized everything, than just learning a new way.

it depends how you formatted the drives... if they are NTFS formatted, then by default OSX will only read them, not write to them... you'll have to install 3rd party software to add the ability to write to them. If they are ExFAT (the best way to go) or FAT32, then they'll work fine as is. If your going to try to back the data up and reformat the drives... go with ExFAT so you can have easy full read/write ability on Windows and Mac.

 

By no backspace key do you mean that there is only a backspace no delete (delete the test your cursor is in front of key). If you press FN + Delete you get the same functionality, it deletes the text in front of you.

 

Thanks for your lengthy response....all great info!

The best bet is for me to go physically check out the machine in person. Odds are when I get the machine I will be using it mostly for "non-gaming" type tasks so I will be fine.

 

Also in regards to using ExFAT might be an issue because I am running WinXP.

Guide: How to format an external drive to work seamlessly with Macs and PCs without third party software. | MacTip.net

 

XP SP3 and later should use ExFAT... there is an update that was specifically for it.
Description of the exFAT file system driver update package

 

You mention having UNIX experience, but just in case you weren't aware of it already; there's a full-fledged UNIX hidden underneath the friendly graphics. It's only as simplistic as you want it to be.

If you prefer to open a terminal window to do some work (like say fire off a Perl one-liner that looks like some kind of unholy incantation), the OS isn't going to stop you.

 

Right. Either way, I don't think it is a big deal. I have yet to encounter a situation where not having a dedicated backspace and delete button has caused problems. There have only been a couple of times when I wanted to delete text in front of the cursor and it took a whole extra 0.2 seconds to hold down the fn key while pressing delete. That isn't really an issue especially since the last Dell notebook I had used a combo delete key (it could delete text or do something else) but it also required the use of a function key in conjunction with it.

So it hasn't been a big adjustment for me despite being tied to Windows since around 1995. As I said, I barely notice it.

 

B&H Photo (BHPhoto.com) which is a licensed Apple Dealer in New York City. Heavy on Pro side although they deal with consumer as well. Best deals around if you know what you are looking for and if you have it shipped to you out of NY no sales tax!