[bfurtado]

First, let me just say you guys have been awesome and patient. I have never used a mac before and decided to switch. I have a REV B 12" PB. Anywhoo, I went to Versiontracker and downloaded MSN messenger. When I launch it, a drive appears on my desktop. Is that normal? It also does it with the P2P program Poisoned.

Brian

[blackbird_1.0]

yes, its called a disk image, you open it and there either an installer or an already built program that you can place in your home directory

hope this helps

[wataru]

Just to expand on blackbird's explanation: A disk image is a file that "pretends" to be a disk when you open it. It's a common distribution method on OS X--think of it as a zip archive that you manipulate with the regular filesystem instead of in WinZip. When you get a disk image, open it up, and either copy the program out of the "disk" or run the installer. Then eject the disk, and throw away the image file (.dmg) if you want to. I keep mine archived so I never need to redownload them in case of a hard drive crash.