[Ute]

I am switching. After looking in the Apple Store for a month and talking to friends, I've ordered an ibook. Question is, what utilities should I buy? On my Dell laptop I have all the usual suspects: Symantec's Norton Utilities, NAV, et al. I also Zone Alarm Pro Firewall, SpyBot Search & Destroy.

What utilities do experienced users suggest for macs? I've seen a lot of disparaging of Symantec/Norton. Is there an alternative? Do I actually need any of those utilites? Do I need spyware removers, defraggers, anti-virus, firewall, etc? If so, what do you experienced folks recommend?

I can't wait to get the laptop and start experimenting with it. Thanks for your advice.

[greenamp]

Well, truth be told, you really won't need any of those apps. At the moment, viruses and spyware are pretty much a non issue in the Mac world. I'm not a fanboy though so I'm not going to tell you it won't ever be a problem. But currently, all the system maintenance type apps you need are bundled with OS X.

As far as tweaking apps, here's a few I really like:

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software...ack/index.html
http://www.usboverdrive.com/

[Ute]

Originally posted by greenamp:
Well, truth be told, you really won't need any of those apps. At the moment, viruses and spyware are pretty much a non issue in the Mac world. I'm not a fanboy though so I'm not going to tell you it won't ever be a problem. But currently, all the system maintenance type apps you need are bundled with OS X.

As far as tweaking apps, here's a few I really like:

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software...ack/index.html
http://www.usboverdrive.com/

Thanks. You just saved me a couple of hundred bucks.

[Rev-O]

I'm a big fan of Cocktail. In addition to helping mind all the Unix underpinnings of OS X, it has some handy features like opening debug menus, force emptying of trash, revealing hidden files etc.
For those odd times that permissions need to be repaired, you can run your crons and prebind as well. Yes, you can do it all without Cocktail, but Cocktail just makes it friendlier.

[Thraxes]

Switched half a year ago... for daily stuff like web and mail I rarely use the PC anymore.

Some nice tools:
Launchbar - awesome little piece of software
MS remote Desktop Client - Remote control for Windows
Audacity - Open Source Audio editing tool
Sizzling Keys - Freeware systemwide Keyboard shortcuts for iTunes
VLC - A "must have" for watching DivX and XVid AVIs
Adium - ICQ, AIM, MSN etc... basically Trillian for the mac

If you are studying an engineering subject the issue of writing reports with lots of formulas does come up. Mostly of course you would use MS word to do this so that everyone can view your file with no fuss. But the equation editor will drive you up the wall. Now some people say LAteX (download it from the download section at apple.com) is a good choice for this but it is very hard to use for an entire document. For a formula though it just rocks! A little addon will use the LAteX engine (so you have to install the monster anyway) but only for doing equations and then rendering them as a drag and drop image which can be used anywhere. Equation editor

[mindwaves]

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=209787

[Ute]

Excellent. I can't wait for it to get here and get started. Thanks for all of the info and suggestions.