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peteragale · Jun 17, 2004, 07:53 AM

After 15 years in the PC realm, I am considering a move back to Mac (a PowerBook G4) because I am increasing my involvement in digital photography and want to use PhotoShop in a more stable environment. However, I will also be using the PowerBook as my principal business machine.

At present, I am using MS Office as my business suite and want to know if I will have have any problem migrating project files currently on my PC to a PowerBook installed with Office. I am imaginng that I will use a USB mini-drive that works in both operating systems to move files. Is all of this possible and un-complicated?

Thanks for your opinions.

Peter Gale

-Q- · Jun 17, 2004, 08:21 AM

There should be no problem with moving your office files back and forth (if you use Powerpoint, you may end up with some oddities from what I've read, but my experience with Word and Excel has been pretty much flawless).

The USB drive option would probably work fine, although you could also just network the two machines together and move the files that way.

gorickey · Jun 17, 2004, 08:33 AM

Welcome Peter!

Just a quick note in case you didn't know ahead of time...the Mac version of Office does NOT have Access if you are using that on a regular basis on your PC, so those project files will not convert easily.

storer · Jun 25, 2004, 01:25 AM

Usb stick will be fine! Thats what i used on my conversioN!

peteragale · Jun 25, 2004, 05:29 AM

Thanks to those who posted in response to my question. Since then, I had an opportunity to test my two USB drivers, which I currently use with a PC. Both are from the same manufacturer, Pine (not well known, but sold here in Canada by one of our biggest technology retailers). One is without a security partition and works fine back and forth between my PC and a PowerBook G4. For security reasons, I have partitioned one half of the other mini-drive. I had hoped that the PowerBook would at least be able to open the un-partitioned side of that drive, but it wouldn't. And, I'm told by the literature with the device, and the technician of the local distributor that the CD-ROM, with the security/partitioning software, will only run on a PC.

So, a further question. Does anyone use a mini-drive between a PC and a Mac that has a security/partitioning system that can be loaded on both operating platforms and work with both types of machines?

Peter

-Q- · Jun 25, 2004, 11:41 AM

Originally posted by peteragale:
So, a further question. Does anyone use a mini-drive between a PC and a Mac that has a security/partitioning system that can be loaded on both operating platforms and work with both types of machines?

Peter

Unfortunately, while most USB thumb/pen/jump drives work fine on the Mac, there has been a lack of support for the security features by most developers.

Ars Technica did a nice review of USB drives that may provide some insight into cross-platform compatibility.

Arkham_c · Jun 25, 2004, 12:24 PM

Originally posted by peteragale:
So, a further question. Does anyone use a mini-drive between a PC and a Mac that has a security/partitioning system that can be loaded on both operating platforms and work with both types of machines?

I've got a JumpDrive Secure. It comes with security software both for OSX and for Windows. I'm not sure if the security is cross platform however (I don't use that feature of it at all).