New Mac User

Hi, I was recently shopping for a notebook, and actually was going for the Asus G1. And thursday, I don't really know why I went and bought the macbook (internet, arrives monday), cause it was actually a very cool deal (some university Student-Teacher something something ). It´s the normal one, 13.3'' 1 GB RAM, T7200.......
I never used Mac OS before nor anything from apple (besides my iPod).
Im going to use it mainly for work ( Matlab, C programming, text sound and video editing, bla bla bla) and very light gaming ( strategy, anything that doesnt consume much of my poor GMA950 ).
So can please someone help me by saying what software do you recommend for this type of work (besides the matlab cause thats obvious )
and any other recommendations to help me get under way with mac?
Thank You.

 

open office for your windows office needs I've never had a problem with it yet transferring files from word and excel

 

I was in a very similar position to the OP back in January when I got my MacBook. Here are the programs that have used and loved since then:

1. QuickSilver. It's free, and it's awesome--as nice as OSX is, OSX without QuickSilver just feels broken to me. This program is, at base, a launcher program--you invoke it using a hotkey (ctrl+space for me) and start typing, and it searches your computer to find things that match what you've typed. And by "things" I mean *everything*: documents, applications, bookmarks etc. Then you can use commands to open, copy, move, email etc. the objects that you found. I find that I can accomplish tasks so, so efficiently with this program since I don't have to bother with the touchpad at all. It's an excellent combination of GUI and keyboard-based UI design.

2. Adium. A really nice chat program--highly recommended, especially if you've got chat handles on multiple services (i.e. MSN, AIM, Yahoo etc.).

3. TextWrangler. A really nice, free, text editor. I would check it out for programming.

4. VLC. Itunes is nice for music files (though I really wish there was a foobar-like player for OSX, but I digress) but VLC is a really handy app to have around since it can play, as far as I can tell, *every* media format around (video and audio).

5. Firefox. Safari is ok, but Firefox is awesome. You probably know all about this already, though.

6. Thunderbird. A really nice email program from Mozilla. Mail (Apple's mail program is nice too), but I prefer some of the more advanced features that TBird has--it may be worth checking out, anyway.

7. AppDelete. This is a really handy little utility that you can use to make sure that you utterly obliterate all traces of a program when you delete it--nice if you like to keep your machine nice and clean.

Well, those are the programs I mostly use that didn't come pre-installed with OSX. In terms of programs that come with the operating system, I would recommend checking out OmniOutliner--it's a tremendous tool for making outlines and taking notes in class.

Finally, as much as I'd like to recommend Open Office, I'm not sure that I should. Here's why. First, to use Open Office on a Mac, you'll need x11 window manager. You can avoid this by simply using NeoOffice instead, though (it is the Mac-specific port of OO). Second, and here's the bigger problem, Neo/Open Office works really well for compatibility with "normal" files, but if you've got stuff with a lot of special characters in it, you will have problems. I mention this because you look like you're doing some sciencey kind of stuff. Second, if you use spreadsheets a lot, the Neo/Open Office program, calc, just isn't up to snuff (compared to Excel) if you do a lot of complex formulae and spreadsheets. You can try it and see if you like it, but I think you might end up seeing if you can get a free/cheap copy of MSOffice for Mac from your college store.

Edit: Oh yeah, and you should check out this thread too: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=82164

 

Thanks. Especially to modal that last bit explaining the difference between the open/neo office i just didnt know. Thanks I'll be sure to check them out.

 

I prefer using Safari over Firefox. Firefox seems to be very slow for some reason. Maybe when Firefox 3 comes out, it'll be more efficient on OS X.