[adil]

i've looked around the forum and found some really helpful stuff, but wanted to make a post just to get your personal opinions.

so i shoud me getting my macbook tomorrow hopefully, it will be my first notebook and my first mac!

so i basically use my pc for regular stuff, browsing, email, chatting, movies (xvid), music, downloading torrents, movies, ms office type stuff, downloading torrents, and perhaps playing some light games. along with the occasional photo and video editing.

so while browsing the forums in anticipation and research i've come across ome pretty cool apps. one allows me to use my remote to do more things (sofa something..) and other neat stuff like that. im sure the mac will have pretty much everything i need out of the box.
just wondering what i should usefor certain things,
torrents (i think azureus works on mac)
xvid (im guessing vlc?)
and for office.. should i stick with my ms office or try out open office?
and for chatting, mainly on msn??

and any other tips for a new mac user?

thanks for the help!

[adil]

oh and i just checked out the What application do I use if I need to...? sticky, helps out alot.
but any other personal tips for me?
cant wait for my macbook!

oh and i forgot to mention.. burning my dvds/video games, mounting image files (daemon tools on windows) and also for dloading music.. limewire works on mac?

[wataru]

Disc burning and image mounting are built in. Limewire sucks; try Cabos instead.

[Gavin]

most of the things you mentioned come with it.

You may need some quicktime plugins for videos - divx, etc.

macupdate.com has links to tons of software

[kmkkid]

I just got my iMac this week, and the first apps I downloaded include:

Butler - app launcher, menubar addon, hot keys.
Divx codec - watch divx movies in QT.
Flip4mac codec - watch wmv in QT.
Real player - Watch real rm, ram, movies.
Stuffit - Opens most archived files including .sit, .zip, .rar etc..
Adium - Multi-chat client (msn, yahoo, jabber, aim etc.)
AppZapper - Uninstaller for OS X apps (not really necessary, but I won a free license and it's cool. )
Transmission - bit torrent app
Toast - cd burning app, or try liquidcd if you want a free alternative
Transmit - Best FTP app for OS X
Candybar - customize your icons
XChat - Nice mIRC like client. Also try Colloquy for IRC with style


Thats about all the 'must have' apps for me.

All can be found on macupdate.com

[- - e r i k - -]

Azureus is sadly still the fastest BitTorrent client for mac.

Adium is what you need for MSN. Make sure you customize it, as it has so many options which are not clearly visible with it's default settings.

MS Office is good, but slow under Rosetta on a MacBook. What do you need Office for mainly? Maybe iWork can work better for you - it does for me.

Get VLC for movies. Oh, and grab the Xvid/DivX and Flip4Mac codecs for QuickTime.

[- - e r i k - -]

There is also this list which I fully endorse:
http://www.thinkmac.net/blog/archive...-software.html

Except for maybe Onyx which really isn't needed with Tiger.