[triskele]

Before I make the big switch which should happen in the next month or two I need to know a few things. Will a Mac be able to mount a FAT32 external HDD with read/write permissions, is it possible to dual-boot(with Linux), and if a particular MP3 player only has window$ listed in the system requirements can it still be mounted(with read/write permissions) as a generic USB storage device?

I only ask because I don't take no for an answer, especially from a sales person, since they know less than me about their own product 90-95% of the time. Thanks.

[analogika]

FAT32 will work with no problems other than that a few rare data formats depend upon the resource fork and may thus not work correctly after being copied to a FAT32 drive, which doesn't support them.

You also won't be able to run Mac programs off a FAT32 drive.


You can dual-boot a Mac with Linux, if you really need to.

generic usb storage devices will simply mount on the desktop - you can drag songs directly from the iTunes window onto the drive (yay for global drag-and-drop).


If your salespeople are clueless, and, even worse, don't readily admit if they're not sure about something, you're visiting the wrong stores.

[triskele]

The only reason why I visited an Apple store is so I could see the merchandise in person(I wanted to see if a 20" iMac was too big). I didn't necessarily go looking for answers but naturally I had a few questions. It's not my fault that the nature of the questions were beyond the scope of most salespeople. So basically I just needed to verify what I believed true that I could use my FAT32 external HDD for storage with no problems, and that an MP3 player would be supported under a USB mass storage type driver. I mainly just use the HDD to store media files(pictures, music, and video), so not being able to install apps on it is fine by me.

The one area they were helpful was in telling me about Apple's student discount when I asked him is Apple ever runs sales.

I know these were easy questions to which I already knew the answer, but I just needed to verify because my Mac experience is severely limited. Thanks.