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Leslie · Apr 17, 2003, 02:48 PM

Switcher here. Getting my PowerBook sent to South Africa this evening! Mmmmm! Can't wait but do have a question. Is the 17" going to be able to read a re-writable Cd which was cut on a PC? I'm intending to transfer all my Ms Office documents, movies and pictures by burning them to CD on the PC and then sticking them into the Superdrive. Will it work?

AssassyN · Apr 17, 2003, 02:55 PM

Originally posted by Leslie:
Switcher here. Getting my PowerBook sent to South Africa this evening! Mmmmm! Can't wait but do have a question. Is the 17" going to be able to read a re-writable Cd which was cut on a PC? I'm intending to transfer all my Ms Office documents, movies and pictures by burning them to CD on the PC and then sticking them into the Superdrive. Will it work?

Absolutely! Just burn all the data (such as Word files, pictures, music, etc.) onto a CD-R or CD-RW on your PC, insert it into the PowerBook, and drag the files to the places you want them on your new Mac! Easy at that!

nobitacu · Apr 18, 2003, 02:21 AM

Yup, you can read it without any problem on the Mac.

Ming

iSky · Apr 18, 2003, 10:19 AM

Niiiiiiiice! I'm about to switch as well (12"PB) and had similar worries about my data. Good to know!

xylon · Apr 18, 2003, 11:12 AM

Originally posted by iSky:
Niiiiiiiice! I'm about to switch as well (12"PB) and had similar worries about my data. Good to know!

Careful, it won't be as easy as that for all your data. Word documents are cross platform. Obvioulsy, there are some files that can only be interpreted by Windows programs. Might be good to know.

As for a Mac reading a PC CD, no problemo.

designbc · Apr 18, 2003, 12:05 PM

If you wanna transfer the data from your PC, you don't need to bun it on CDs. Just connect your Mac to the PC.
In the networking forum there are some posts that explain how to do it.
I'm a switcher and that's what I did. Now I use the PC as a backup HD

Leslie · Apr 19, 2003, 04:21 PM

Thanks for that but, what cable did you use and how did you do it? Could you provide more details...

AssassyN · Apr 19, 2003, 04:42 PM

Originally posted by Leslie:
Thanks for that but, what cable did you use and how did you do it? Could you provide more details...

If you'd rather just send your data over a LAN w/o burning it onto a CD, just follow these instructions (my post in the Networking Forum):

Switching to Mac and have tons of mp3s, Word docs, and other vital files that you really need on your Mac?

Well of course you can buy Move2Mac, or any other file transfer software/special cables, but of course no one wants to pay anything when it can be done easier. Well, there's a nifty option of "Connect to Server" on Macs in which you can mount your PC's hard drive on your Mac's desktop when both computers are on the same LAN and drag files onto your Mac, but this presents a huge problem at times. This feature is still very unstable a large majority of the time, and it was consistantly freeze up both machine in the process of transferring files, and as a Mac newbie I had no other clue what to do when I myself tried this but to keep restarting both machines and trying again. Well about 15 tries later a hard reset did more than make me ill, it screwed a boot sector on my 17" PBs hard drive, rendering the machine completely unbootable, even after running Disk Utility numerous times, and even trying to "Archive & Install". I was left with no option but to completely reformat & reinstall OS X, rendering all my previous setting up the machine work useless.

So after reinstalling, spending countless hours awake re-setting up everything and getting over my anger, I was still back to the drawing board presented with the same problem: I had 19.5gigs of mp3s on my PC that I really needed on my Mac, and no USB/FireWire External HD. So after racking my brain, I thought of something to try, and lo and behold it worked 98% seemlessly, was absolutely free, and never once caused my Mac any trouble! So what is this magical solution? Well, the thing you'd probably never think of, actually: Yahoo Messenger.

The latest versions of Yahoo Messenger for PC & Mac have something amazing built-in: when two users are logged on, and sending messages and files (the files is the key here) over the same LAN, it automatically defaults to sending those messages/files via the LAN rather than the internet. So this allows for speeds up to 100Mbps for File Transfers between the machines connected via Yahoo Messenger on the same LAN! So you log onto Y! Messenger on your PC using one username, and on your Mac using another messagename, message each other, request to send a file, make the Mac accept it, and BAM! Your file is instantly being transferred from the PC to the Mac at LAN speeds and it won't crash the machines like "Connect to Server" will! The only reason I said "98%" seemless above is that ONE single time out of 30 transfers my PC *ONLY* locked up and required a reboot, while the Mac just cancelled the transfer and awaited another one...BEAUTIFUL!!

However, the only limitation I've seen is that the files need to be under 900MB in size, as 900MB+ files will download but WON'T finalize and save onto the Mac's HD (I let it sit 6 hours hoping it would eventually save, but it won't, so just divide files up to chunks of 900MB and under). So I created about 25 or so .zip files using StuffIt for Windows with ~900MB of mp3s in each of them, and a couple hours later, I had all 19gigs of my music onto my Mac without crashing the Mac a single time!

So, in conclusion, Yahoo Messenger is the answer to all home networking transfers between PC's and Macs! Just have both machines on a LAN and Y! Messenger will send files at LAN speeds! WOOHOO!!

Hope this helps other switchers out, enjoy!