[ioaz]

Hi, I'm not an entirely new Mac user; I had a G3 powerbook for awhile, but it was just too slow for my liking, so I sold it. I recently got a really good deal on a Mac mini so I got one of those. It's the 1.42, with a combo drive and I upgraded it to 1GB of Ram.

I like it so far, but the problem is that I've been a windows "power user" for quite some time. I'm just sick of the windows environment and have tried to switch to linux on many occasions, but that is just too complicated to be an enjoyable computing environment. This brings me to Mac OSX, which seems to be the best of both worlds.

The mini is a great little machine, but seems to be a little slow at times, which i'm sure is because of the 4200rpm hard drive. I just figured that I could use the mini as an inexpensive way to get used to OSX and then eventually get a powermac, which should suit me just fine.

Anyway enough rambling, I have a few questions here:

1. When using the mouse (logitech mx500) on the mini it's seems much, much slower, if I crank it up to full speed tracking it seems alright, but horribly inacurate. Is there a difference between the way osx and windows handle the mouse? Is there a way to tweak it?

2. I also notice that text in OSX seems to be really blurry compared to windows. I'm running a dell 2005FPW. I changed the settings so it's set for an lcd and turned off the smoothing for fonts below 10 pt. It just seems that it could be better, so I was kind of curious if anyone knows any tweak for this too, or is it just the nature of OSX and something I need to become used to?

I guess that is it for now, these two things bug me the most. I mean it's hard to start trying to switch when your input device just seems wrong and the display is a little, well, strange.

Thanks for any help.

[Krypton]

Both of those are common issues of switchers, but that don't have distinct solutions - the behaviour you describe is intended to be like that.

In System prefs -> Displays you can change the type of font smoothing (e.g. CRT/ Flat panel) but that may do little to emulate clear type on Windows.

Give this a whirl to customise mouse tracking etc.

[Longshanks]

Try USB Overdrive for your MX-500. It will allow you to adjust the speed, acceleration and all of your buttons on a per-application basis. You can find it on Version Tracker.

[nickw311]

I downloaded USB Overdrive because I had the same mouse issue when I switched but it disabled Expose being activated by my middle mouse button.

[ioaz]

Thanks for the help, I seem to have the mouse in a setting I like now, so that's really handy and makes the mac easier to use. The only issue is that I seem to get headaches trying to read the anti-aliased fonts. If I turn them off they are really no easier to read. I guess i'm really used to clear type font on windows, I have to say I, actually, much prefer it. Why doesn't apple have some sort of option like this? I mean, I REALLY want to switch to the mac, but I don't think I can do it if I'm going to get headaches like this trying to read articles.

Is the resolution of the monitor maybe a problem? It's 1680x1050 so things are naturally smaller, but I always loved this on my windows box. I mean you can have much better window management. I can increase the the size of the text, but then the websites' layouts are all messed up and if I'm going to do that, what's the point of having the high resolution, I mean then I could just have a 19" with a 1280x1024.

Sorry for the ramble here, but this just really frustrates me. I never really noticed this on my pimso powerbook. I mean how does apple intend to get a larger user base if things like this are "normal." I'm not a fan of Microsoft at all, but I really have to hand it to them with the clear type.

This has been a fairly depressing experience, solely for this, I was so excited when I got my mini.

[Longshanks]

nickw311,

I downloaded USB Overdrive because I had the same mouse issue when I switched but it disabled Expose being activated by my middle mouse button.

At first I had the same problem with USB Overdrive and Expose. The Expose function would be activated when I typed the F9 key into USB Overdrive's settings instead of being mapped to the button I wanted. I found though, that it can map the expose function keys just fine by holding down the option key when entering the desired function key. I now have my MX-500's scroll click set to activate Expose and have all of the other features of USB Overdrive.

I wish there was a product like USB overdrive for Windows because I have to use Logitech's driver on my Windows machine at work, and just like the Mac version, it doesn't allow mapping keys differently for different applications. If anyone knows of a Windows product that can please let me know.