[CatharticFLux]

Hello everyone!

After months of reading this forum and years of soul searching, I'm ready to dump my 15 years of PC usage and come to the light side. In particular, I want to buy the infamous 15" AlBook and I had some general Powerbook questions to make the transition as smooth as possible as well as knowing what to expect from my new machine.

1. Is there a way to easily network my PC (10/100 ethernet, winXP Pro) to my new powerbook to transfer about 40GB of data?

2. When I come home and connect my Powerbook to my trusty 19" CRT (using the DVI-to-VGA and in "clamshell mode",) can I set the resolution to any that my CRT can support (i.e. 1600x1200) ?

3. Since I'm coming from a 2.4GHz P4, I'm concerned about how "snappy" is OSX going to feel in a 1.25Ghz G4. I've been toying around with Powerbooks at the Apple Store and CompUSA for a while, but it's hard to tell from sporadic usage if the OS feels sluggish or not. I don't particularly care how many SETI@home work units it does or if a photoshop filter takes a few extra seconds, but the overall responsiveness of using OSX.

4. I have read suprisingly little about people using Entourage. Is this because Entourage isn't a very good PIM/e-mail client, or is it because the Mail app is that good?

5. I've read some disappointments with the ATI mobility 9600. I have little to no interest in 3D performance, but 2D performance is *very* important. Is Quartz Extreme performance good on the 15" AlBook?

6. Out of morbid curiosity... Do Macs suffer from "burning crankiness," that is, the inability to get anything else done, such as playing an MP3, while making a CD? I've gone through 3 generations of PCs with CD-RWs, and doesn't matter how fast the machine is, you hit that burn button, and you better be ready to do some light web browsing, because the machine will feel "jerky."

7. Any words of wisdom to make this process smooth and rewarding?

[beijinger]

1. There are so many ways to do this. Easiest is go to www.apple.come and go into switch, which would give you a step by step transfer instruction. I used a 20G portable drive and it was easy. The only problem I had on this was on the 2000+ email from last six months that I needed to transfer. Eventually set up a .Mac imap account and did it that way. Once it got going it was a cinch.

2. This I don't know. Someone else may be able to help you.

3. I also have a 2.4 ghz desktop which has begun to gather dust when the new 15 incher arrived. Its all subjective but I say the PB is definitely "snappier"! Only "slower" aspect is the response when I use my bluetooth keyboard, but that could be due to the bluetooth setup.

4.No, Entourage is definitely better than Mail, but most people don't want to contribute if they can avoid it to MS coffers. I settled on Entourage after using both Mail and Eudora for a while.

5. All I can say is it is phenomenal, Quartz Extreme I mean. Beyond description. Just love it on the 1.25 Pb.

6. Don't feel the "jerkiness" but hey, don't think anyone would be burning stuff all day long unless he is using this to run a pirating operation.

Just do it. Finding new tricks in OS X and the new PB every day that makes my life easier. You will find the same.

[gruffster]

Glad to hear that you're considering the switch. Here's my take on your questions.

1. Yup, it's easy enough. Configure the TCP/IP settings on your Mac, plug it into the network or directly into your PC (and you don't even need a crossover cable), share the folder on XP containing your data, mount the folder on OSX and copy away.

2. Yup. Plugging it into a 19" CRT next to me, I get access to range of different resolutions ranging from 800x600 to 1920x1080.

3. My companion PC is a 2.4GHz P4 with XP Pro and a Gig of RAM. I think it really balances out between the 2 OSs. Some things are much faster on OSX (I have a 17" 1.33Ghz PB) but some things are faster on XP. For the most part, I think OSX is certainly "snappy" and nowhere sluggish. However, this is subjective so YMMV.

4. I started out with Entourage and migrated to Mail. Entourage is certainly a full featured mail client with all the bells as whistles. Mail however does everything that I want out of a mail client. Microsoft apps do also have a knack of gobbling up a large number of processor cycles when they are supposed to be sitting idly by doing nothing.

5. Quartz Extreme is excellent on the 9600. It runs significantly smoother than the 7500 on my TiBook. The 3D performance of the 9600 isn't half bad but it pales in comparison to anything on a desktop.

6. I haven't experienced any jerkiness when burning CDs or DVDs. While burning, I've had the CPU maxed out performing tasks like encoding MPEG videos and playing Quicktime movies and browsing the web simultaneously with no really significant (perceived) degradation in performance.

7. Just take some time to learn and enjoy the new environment. OSX is pretty phenomenal and even after using it every day since its release, I still find little bits of attention to detail that surprise me. It's nice that so much thought has gone in to developing a good user experience.

[cszar2001]

I can only comment on two of your questions:

3) OS X is incredible. I used to work on a PC with XP that got slower and slower; nothing like that on my PB17. It stays as fast as it did on the first day. Be sure to upgrade to at least 1GB RAM as soon as possible-the speed difference is enormous.

6) How about burning a CD, listening to iTunes, browsing the web and reading a few articles at the same time without experiencing any problems? OS X handles 7 and more apps at the same time without getting into trouble.

Have fun! You`ll never look back!

[tritonus]

Me: 15 years PCs before, now PB 17" since March

1. Worked for me.

2. N/A. Only use the 17" PB display

3. I like it! It's different, let's say it's snappy in the important tasks.

4. I wanted to replace Outlook with Entourage but was convinced by Apple's Mail.app. Don't even try Entourage if you don't have to.

5. N/A, nVidia

6. No, real multitasking when burning. See 3.) "snappy in the important tasks".

7. Give yourself a week to get used to OS X. You won't miss XP or any Windows OS after that...

[Allenzi35]

Hi,
I just switched in July from a 2.6 P4 with 1GB ram to my Ti 1GHz with 1GB ram. I have felt like I made a mistake after about a week. I am not giving up but there are some things that just frustrate me to no end. Starting with the snappyness. Everytime I do simple things like change the volume or screen brightness, It's delayed? Everytime keychain ask's me to save a new pasword and I push ok, it takes like 3 seconds to register my click on the ok button.
I really don't understand what's so SUPER about a superdrive that only burns at 1X and only burns dvd-r. If anyone should hold the superdrive title it should be sony's notebook drive's. OSX since day one, before I put anything of mine in the computer, takes forever to boot up, almost twice as long XP. One button click? I'm sorry but I feel the keyboard should only be used when typing. Having to use both hands to get alternate menu's is inconvienant and a hassle to me. I still cannot get used to having one click. There's more but I will stop there.

Now for the goods, since it takes so long to startup, I just never turn it off. Being able to close the screen and open it with immediate action is just the coolest thing ever. I have never had a PC that handle sleep this good and fast. It's prettier to look at both hardware and software. NO POP UP'S. Safari has it's bugs but they are welcome with open arm's after dealing with constant pop up's in IE. I use entourage and I love it. There are a few more unique things that are mac only that make me smile. (ipod and itunes)

I still find the cons outweighing the pro's more than the other way around. These board's have helped me alot since July but I still think that I switched for the wrong reasons and find myself regretting it to often.

[CatharticFLux]

Thanks everyone! Without your help I wouldn't consider switching. I will follow up soon with a post on how it actually went.

[hazelnutcoffeeg]

did you know that you CAN use a two button scroll mouse on your apple?

[Corinthian]

Allenzi35:

Chill down lad! When I was in the early stage of switching, I was even more dumb than you do now, I know nothing about the PC right-click when I first switched, and not to mention management of the system...

Even now, I would say I still got lots to learn, but with three years past, and going to invest on my third Mac by departing with the first, I would not regret at the choice of switching. Why?

1. Macs are definitely friendlier and easier to manage than PCs do, especially when it comes to trouble-shooting...I agree that even my Ti 1G (same as you do) loads the system quite slowly, but I would never find apps being slowed down by the problem of the Mac on loading...

2. SuperDrive, you can say, ain't that super in your way. But where else you can find a notebook with friendly features and in such a light weight to have a DVD-RW?

3. Most importantly, regardless whether being a leisure Mac user or a "Pro" one, the stability of the system is the very main reason that I keep hanging on to Macs. Why not? You can imagine how bad it would be if a machine keeps freezing when you are doing something, regardless of its importance. Even slow Macs like my first can still work very well upon stability. Are PCs going to offer that?

After all, pal, is the matter of time. Once you get used to it, you would just find everything is too conveniently available to you on Macs. Shortcuts, "right-click", management, etc, will become the "killers" to keep you stay...

And do come to boards like this one, it really helps me a lot on the way to settle with my Mac(s)...

[ngrundy]

After months of reading this forum and years of soul searching, I'm ready to dump my 15 years of PC usage and come to the light side. In
Excellent, no time is too late, I switched in November of last year, wouldn't even bother going back these days my TiG4 has opened up too many new avenues.

1. Is there a way to easily network my PC (10/100 ethernet, winXP Pro) to my new powerbook to transfer about 40GB of data?
Take your pick, FTP or Windows File Share. OSX has a built in FTP server (as does windows 2k/xp) and it can also do the windows file shareing thing. setup a network between them (powerbooks have a autosence ethernet port so it doesn't matter if you've got a straight or x-over ethernet cable). Set up a couple of IP's, duck into the Sharing preference pane on the laptop and select Windows File Shareing or File Transfer Protocol. Or if you want to connect to your PC from the laptop then while in finder select Go -> Connect to Server.

2. When I come home and connect my Powerbook to my trusty 19" CRT (using the DVI-to-VGA and in "clamshell mode",) can I set the resolution to any that my CRT can support (i.e. 1600x1200) ?
Sure will, They have 64meg of video ram so the external port will more than happily push those sorts of resolution. though personally i went from using 2x17" CRT's to using the inbuilt LCD of my laptop and don't miss having the CRT's and what not at all.

3. Since I'm coming from a 2.4GHz P4, I'm concerned about how "snappy" is OSX going to feel in a 1.25Ghz G4.
I came from a dual p3 866 1.5gb ram. Personally i feel that my laptop is more capable. There are times that finder can get slow and I think it's one of the major components that needs an overhaul, which from everything i've read has happened in 10.3 (Panther).

4. I have read suprisingly little about people using Entourage. Is this because Entourage isn't a very good PIM/e-mail client, or is it because the Mail app is that good?
Entorage is the biggest pile of crap this side of the black stump (imho). Apple Mail is much smaller and intuitive to use. It's got some great mail filtering in it, the local caching of IMAP accounts works really nicely and it doesn't blow chunks of RAM all over the place like Entourage did for me. Also Apple Mail gets the idea that a portable user might not be connected to their home network all the time. Every day when I went to uni i'd have to stuff around with Entourage to shut it up other wise it would be beeping and jumping out of the dock every time I opened the laptop up because it couldn't connect to my IMAP server. </rant> Also Entorage doesn't intergrate with anything. Where with a combination of iCal, iSync, Address Book and Saling Clicker I'm able to sync my phone's address book and calander details, oh and use my phone as a DVD Player remote or a Powerpoint controler

5. I've read some disappointments with the ATI mobility 9600. I have little to no interest in 3D performance, but 2D performance is *very* important. Is Quartz Extreme performance good on the 15" AlBook?
I can't comment on the 9600 itself but the 9000 my laptop has in it is a very nice video card, gives a really nice image. I strongly suggest you setup a Colour Profile on your computer by default it will look rather washed out and pretty lackluster. I made a quick custom calibrated profile with the inbuilt tool and it improved the visual richness greatly.

6. Out of morbid curiosity... Do Macs suffer from "burning crankiness," that is, the inability to get anything else done, such as playing an MP3, while making a CD? I've gone through 3 generations of PCs with CD-RWs, and doesn't matter how fast the machine is, you hit that burn button, and you better be ready to do some light web browsing, because the machine will feel "jerky."
Hm, well I'm replying to you while playing a mp3 stream from di.fm, apple mail just finished a mail check and there is a few other apps running in the backgound (ical, address book, proteus, metro, omnioutliner, omnigraffle, preview and iChat. Machine is responsive as allways. Only time I notice a major slow down in performance is when Disk Copy is compressing my 6gb home directory into a image for backup. But i can still chat, listen to music and web browse when that's happening, it's just a little slow at times switching apps. Also I'd suggest restarting safari every 4-5 days as it seems to have a slight memory leak in it and gets slow after a while. Also probably more to the point of the question ... I burnt a bunch of CD's off while i was cleaning 8 months of downloads and other random stuff off my hard disk a while ago. It didn't really make too much of an impact while burning itself, but in the bit where it copies 650meg of data from one partition to make the disk image to burn it did make a bit of an impact, sorta like the one i see when i'm doing a home dir backup but it's not a complete halting of system activities thank god.

[ngrundy]

Starting with the snappyness. Everytime I do simple things like change the volume or screen brightness, It's delayed? Everytime keychain ask's me to save a new pasword and I push ok, it takes like 3 seconds to register my click on the ok button.
Sounds like you need to do a permissions check, fire up disk utilitiy and run it on your boot drive.

takes forever to boot up, almost twice as long XP
How often do you shut down your laptop? Boot time on my laptop from a cold start with a clean shutdown is about 1min. From a crash or otherwise unclean shutdown its about 3 mins as it spends quite a bit of time doing a file system check.

One button click? I'm sorry but I feel the keyboard should only be used when typing. Having to use both hands to get alternate menu's is inconvienant and a hassle to me.
Heh, coming from a somewhat strong unix background I'm a keyboard junkie but I have a 2 button scroll mouse on my desk here. though i hardly use the right mouse button. I highly recommend you learn the common keyboard shortcuts they save serious amounts of time getting around the system cmd-h is worth it's weight in gold alone. As a side note if you think windows makes extensive use of a mouse you've never used XWindows/OpenWindows/CDE/Blah. there is no consistant keyboard shortcut for copy and paste it's highlight to copy and middle click to paste. (or for those 3rd button challenged btn1 and 2 at the same time)

I use entourage and I love it.
Have you tried Apple Mail at all? I personally find Entourage to be the biggest pain. Plus Apple Mail has spam filtering built in

[Commodus]

I'll answer what hasn't already been addressed so far (or add my opinion):

1. Ethernet would be quickest, but if you want an easier solution you could use something Move2Mac from Detto.

3. A 1.25 GHz G4 should be alright in itself, but remember that you'll qualify for a "free" ($20 shipping-and-handling) copy of Panther. Panther is supposed to make even older systems feel new, so you'll probably love it.

4. Entourage is mainly for people who need access to Microsoft-specific functions, and even then Panther is supposed to have some Exchange integration with the Mail app. If you just want to check e-mail and have a calendar, you can use Mail, Address Book and iCal.

5. The Mobility Radeon 9600 is the fastest laptop graphics chip, full stop - and it's so quick that it's often CPU-independent (i.e. a PowerBook with an MR 9600 can beat an x86 system with a decidedly faster CPU). It's more than enough for 2D functions.

6. I have a year-old PowerBook, and I can be burning a CD, listening to some MP3s, browsing, and chatting with others; programs run at the exact same speed. I believe it's because OS X's FreeBSD/Unix foundations tend to give programs more equal priorities.

7. When you do get your Mac, remember that closing a window isn't the same as quitting the program; with a lot of Mac apps you're only just making the window invisible (sort of like minimizing). If you want to quit a program, you go to its menu near the Apple (where it says the program name) or else hit Apple-Q.

[SEkker]

Allenzi35, how often do you need to type in your keychain password? I normally only have to do so when I do an OS upgrade.

Also, if your HD is near full, you're suffering a big performance hit from older notebook computer drives. Some more space and a higher I/O (such as found in a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive) would likely help you out.

And I use an external, 2 button scroll mouse, and I wouldn't go back to the Apple style interface. When I have to use the trackpad, I feel handicapped. And I am not a main Windows user, so I can see how this would be a real annoyance.

Finally, if your machine is feeling that sluggish, it might really help to do a fresh OS install, or run diskwarrior. Or take a new 1GHz machine for a test drive to see how a fresh OS should feel, just in case. You're also a perfect candidate upgrader for OS X 10.3.

[cambro]

Allenzi35

I agree. If you are really experiencing such sluggishness then something is wrong. Period.

I have a Ti Ghz with 1 Gig RAM and nothing is sluggish, even on reduced processor performance. Of course, you do know that the sound system powers off with inactivity on battery right? So there is a delay there sometimes.

If you are a seeing a delay with the screen brightness buttons, on or off battery, then you are either an alien operating in a different time dimension or something is wrong with your system.

As mentioned, DO NOT fill up your hard disk completely on any computer. My sister did this on her iBook and it caused big troubles. Nothing was lost, but performance was lousy (just because there is inevitable swapping that goes on and when a disk is completely full, files get fragged all over the place).

Anyway....good luck with the switch CatharticFLux...let us know how it goes.

[CatharticFLux]

I went to the Apple Store to check some things out before I buy (I'm still watiing on one more paycheck,) and I had a couple of remarks/questions:

Changing the color profile from "color lcd" to sRGB does provide a more colorful screen, but it looks a bit oversaturated, or perahps too high of a contrast (I'm not a display tech expert.) How are you guys calibrating your displays?

The font anti-aliasing seemed mediocre, and I tried changing the setting from "Standard best for CRT" to "Medium best for LCD" but nothing changed. So I tried all 4 settings and there seemed to be no changes to on screen font whatsoever... do you need to restart?

Thanks for all the replies!

[ngrundy]

Originally posted by CatharticFLux:
I went to the Apple Store to check some things out before I buy (I'm still watiing on one more paycheck,) and I had a couple of remarks/questions:

Changing the color profile from "color lcd" to sRGB does provide a more colorful screen, but it looks a bit oversaturated, or perahps too high of a contrast (I'm not a display tech expert.) How are you guys calibrating your displays?

The font anti-aliasing seemed mediocre, and I tried changing the setting from "Standard best for CRT" to "Medium best for LCD" but nothing changed. So I tried all 4 settings and there seemed to be no changes to on screen font whatsoever... do you need to restart?

Thanks for all the replies!

To calibrate select the 'Calibrate' button under the color tab it will launce an app to do all the calibration. Of if you want to get all pro and stuff there are hardware solutions out there that do the calibration for you they are worth dollars and only really of use to people who spend their life doing graphics work.

No idea on the AA thing, I have it on medium and it looks quite nice. I don't really like overly fuzzy fonts which seems to be what some figure that AA should be on text.

[alien]

I've used SuperCal to calibrate my iBook screen. It may take a little while to understand how to do it properly, but I'm very pleased with the result.

The built-in calibrator will do too. I recommend gamma 1.8 (traditional Mac gamma) and D65 color temparature ("sunlight white").

[SwitchnSOON]

I switched (at home anyway) to a mac in April. I bought a 17 inch PB.

I still use a Windows machine for work, as they are they ONLY machines allowed to connect to our network.

But I am still incredibly impressed with the technology, form and function of this machine.

I am sitting on the breezeway, outside of my home, listening to an internet radio station, connected to the web, with several apps open.

Unless Apple folds I do not see myself ever going back.

BTW-It was my first iPod, and its great form and function that led me to seriously look at using a mac.

[MacsGalor]

If you want scroll and right click options when using your trackpad go to versiontracker.com and do a search for Sidetrack. This program works great.

[fat mac moron]

Originally posted by Allenzi35:
I really don't understand what's so SUPER about a superdrive that only burns at 1X and only burns dvd-r. If anyone should hold the superdrive title it should be sony's notebook drive's.

Little known fact, but if your SuperDrive is flashable, you can upgrade it's ROM so it does 2x DVD-R and 1x DVD-RW, along with CD-R & CD-RW. Just search the forums for the files...

[nagromme]

Wait until next month to buy: Panther will be included. faster, better--a BIG upgrade to the OS. I switched long ago and love OS X--but I'm really looking forward to Panther.

Allenzi: those kinds of delays aren't normal. 3 seconds after hitting OK? Your machine does have a problem of some kind--hopefully not a physical one. Ignore the rude folks here, or try the forums at MacCentral.com, and hopefully someone can talk you through finding the issue.

Also, new PowerBooks are quite different from Allenzi's: faster, and with DVD-RW support apparently? Maybe even +R and +RW, once Panther is out. That's not clear yet.