Made the switch - couple questions...

Made a switch to a MBP that I got this morning, and the little bit I played with it was great! Have a few questions I was hoping people could help me with:

1.) I started looking at the guide on here for switching and looked at the specs of the MBP to make sure I got everything I ordered. The only thing I didn't know how to verify was the harddrive being 7200. Is there a way to check this? I was able to verify everything else was correct.

2.) I notice that the finder is always 'active' in the doc. The little glowing sphere is underneath it. The finder doesn't seem to respond to command Q to quit it out. When I force quit it, it restarts and is in the doc again. Any way to close the finder so it's not always active??

Thanks!

 

1) Open System Profiler (either through Spotlight) or the Apple in the upper toolbar > About this Mac > More Info...

Select Seria-ATA in the menu to the left and you should get a bunch of info about the hard drive installed in your notebook. You can then Google the model number/ go to the manufacturers website to confirm the specs.

2) Finder is like explorer.exe in that it is pretty integral to the OS. You can kill it using terminal via the command "killall Finder" but the process will just restart again (as it is intended to do so).

 

Cool thanks! I was wondering if i needed to google the model number and sounds like that's the route to go

I guess I had thought Finder wasn't always 'active' in the dock from videos/screenshots I've seen, but maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly and users don't usually have their finder in the dock. Just thought it was weird that there was no way to get rid of the glowing bubble underneath it in the dock. Thanks!

 

The glowing spheres are actually helpful, as they let you know what applications you have running at any given time. Not much utility otherwise, but a nice touch imo.

 

The Finder is your "desktop" which is always active. There's no way remove the Finder icon from the Dock. The Finder icon goes back since the first Macintosh and has always displayed. In Mac OS X it had to be justified for it to be in the Dock so that's why the active bubble remains constant. But yes, as the other poster mentioned, it's an integral part of the system, it's your entire desktop.

 

Mac os x is so simple and easy and clean. One thing i miss is the vista aero effect. I hope it comes in snow leopard.

 

Hey, Congrats to the Mac side! The previous posters have pretty much summed it up, so I don't need to go into too much detail.

The Finder is basically the Hard Drive, and everything that you have stored on it. It'll always be running as long as your computer is running, because that's where you can go to find all of your files.

 

Do note that Finder ties in with Spotlight as well. Spotlight is the fastest way to find stuff on your computer. Just hit command+space to access it. The same thing within the Finder in the search area.

Finder + Spotlight are just some of the best tools OS X comes with.

 

That's very true! It makes searching for things so much faster and efficiently.

 

Cool, thanks for all the tips I have the missing manual on switching from windows to mac so I'll be reading that thoroughly. Enjoying it very much so far! Just wish the macbook pro's speakers were a little louder. I'm actually finding that while I like the 17's screen a ton, text is pretty darn small at the res it uses. Wish I could just increase the fonts across the board.

 

Cool!! The missing manual is a nice book. I wish i had it. But i hear it's a bit expensive for a book.

 

I've heard very good things about The Missing Manual. Glad you're liking the switch, as I know I did! On the 17inch, you could always increase the DPI, which would make the text bigger and more easy on the eye.

 

Yeah, the "Missing Manual - Mac OS X - Leopard Edition" is a fantastic book. It is absolutely a must-have book for dummies like me! I have it & as I mentioned earlier in another thread, I got it about 8 months before I bought my Alu MB!

 

It really is a great book! You're no dummy. I started to research Mac OS X Leopard and everything that has to do with it about 6-8 months before I got my first Mac. It surely helped me maneuver my way around the computer, and made my first experience that much better. I was using it like I had one for a year, when I first got it.

 

@Colton: I also did the same thing!! I sold my dell in march last year and in may, started lurking on mac forums. (I was previously in the dell forums).. I went to the retails stores to get familiar with os x. Then i got my macbook pro in november last year. I was sooo happy!!! I never thought i would be able to get a macbook pro. It was either a macbook pro or a dell studio xps 16.(Which was yet to be released). The macbook would have been too small for me. The 15" unibody is simply perfect. Not too big and not too small!!!

 

LOL. That's like saying a car has little utility other than taking you places or you'd have to walk. Knowing what programs you have open is sort-of invaluable, non?