'Switcher!' - purchased an ibook, few questions.

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phrozenpenguin

n00b
Joined
Dec 2, 2001
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38
Hi,
Ive just purchased an ibook dual USB- 500mhz G3, with a 14gb GD and CD drive.
I put another 256mb ram in to make 384, and have got an airport card inside :)

Its currently running OS 10.2, but i have the disks to upgrade to 10.3 - i gather this is a good idea for speed increases?
Would it be best to upgrade from 10.2 or do a clean install? With a windows box i would alwats clean install - does this apply to Mac's?

I plan to use this for wireless web browsing, IM, music, and web coding/design.
Is the following s/w along the right lines?

Safari - browser
Fire - MSN? - other option?
any other mp3 players than itunes?

Photoshop for graphics- which version? Is it going to struggle on my hardware?

Dreamweaver mx 2004 - is this going to struggle on my hardware?

And if i wanted to install apache/php/mysql is is going to be a huge resource hog? Could i create 2 seperate users e.g.

developer for testing php etc
user for just browsing web etc

Thanks for the help guys, any other tips for a Mac n00b then throw them this way.

So far i'm chuffed, it looks stunning and is very quiet :D

Cheers.
 
Originally posted by phrozenpenguin
Its currently running OS 10.2, but i have the disks to upgrade to 10.3 - i gather this is a good idea for speed increases?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's a good idea. Panther is generally better than Jaguar. It's faster, too.
Would it be best to upgrade from 10.2 or do a clean install? With a windows box i would alwats clean install - does this apply to Mac's?
Click to expand...
Doesn't really matter. Upgrade. Macs don't have a register that becomes cluttered like Windows does.

Safari - browser
Fire - MSN? - other option?
any other mp3 players than itunes?
Click to expand...
Safari is alright, but I prefer Mozilla. There's Firebird, too, I suppose... and OmniWeb 5 looks VERY promising. But it's just a beta sofar.

Proteus is, IMO, the best IM client regardless of platform.

Why you'd not want to use iTunes is beyond my understanding. I think it's the best music playing app ever, all categories and platforms. But you can use MacAmp (if it still exists) or whatever. Go look at http://www.versiontracker.com/ !

Photoshop for graphics- which version? Is it going to struggle on my hardware?
Click to expand...
The latest you can get your hands on. Yes, it will put a strain on your hardware, but Photoshop puts a strain on ANY system. It shouldn't be too slow.

Dreamweaver mx 2004 - is this going to struggle on my hardware?
Click to expand...
Not a whole lot I think.

And if i wanted to install apache/php/mysql is is going to be a huge resource hog? Could i create 2 seperate users e.g.
Click to expand...
It's only a strain while you're running it... and yes, you can create two separate users. Or more, if you like, for pretty much everything. Not that you'd need it, but you CAN.


Feel free to ask anything and I'll try to help you as best I can! :D
 
Proteus and Fire are both good. I have been using Fire for a while but am gonna switch back to Proteus soon.

I use FireFox .8 for all of be web browsing, PC and Mac. Have not tried OmniWeb yet.
 
Don't bother with OmniWeb yet. It's slow, unstable and generally buggy. Unless of course you're willing to actually submit bugs and such...
 
Thanks for the replies :)
On monday i will have time to play.

One thing i noticed is i could change the old username/password, but not the short name?

Looking forward to a +ve mac experience :)
 
the short user name is only able to be changed when the user is being created...if it stored in the netinfo db and if you DO change it you are screwed unless you know exactly what the short name was...I see it about once per month...as for loading 10.3 you will have to upgrade as you have an upgrade CD and it requires a previous verions of the OS on there...you can restore the drive or wipe and install 9 and 10.2 then upgrade to 10.3 but you shouldn't need to
 
Cheers.
I have the OS 10.2 install disc so could do a clean install and then upgrade.

Whats the short name used for?
Its just the short name relates to its previous owner.
 
the short name is used by the system to identify the user as well as their home folder and such stuff...there is also the long name which does the same thing but is usually easier to remember...just remember to set the short name to what ever YOU want when creating a user and you will be fine
 
Safari is a great browser. It will sometimes have issue with Java in web pages but that is the only negative thing I have to say about it. I personally think it is better than Firebird or any of the other browsers available for the Mac.

I use Photoshop and I love it. I don't have the latest version so I can't comment on that one but it performs fine on my 600Mhz G3 iBook w/ 640Mb of RAM.

For IM I use Adium. It is not new though it is best if you use the new Alpha that is being developed. I use it for AIM, I'm not sure what other IM services it supports off hand since many are still be worked on:

http://adium.sourceforge.net/

I also use Dreamweaver, though the MX version. It's alright but can be annoying sometimes. It isn't that great at FTP either but I deal with it. For being an all in one integrated solution it works fine. I don't use the WYSIWYG features of it, I just write code and upload it, but I like it anyways.

I don't use anything besides iTunes and it works great for me. :)


About the short name... it is your true name and it is also possible to change it, but it isn't easy. This book has the details as to how:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mcosxhks/index.html

I do have the book, and I would post how, but it is in storage right now. Just go to your local book store and read the section if you don't want to buy it.
 
Thanks guys.
Finally got round to having a little play.

Upgrade to 10.3 went great, so thats smooth. Doesnt want to play ball with the latest 10.3.3 update but i can probably live without that.

Just installed DWMX 2004 and PS CS but havent had time to use them yet. Ive got Office V.x so im setup on that front.

Downloading firefox now.
Havent played with itunes yet.
Proteus seems ok, can it show me how many messages i have in hotmail? Thats fairly vital for me....along with a popup when i recieve new mail.

How does os x 'mail' compare to entourage in your opinion?

I think il live with the short name option now!

Worked straight off on both my 100mbps cabled network and my wireless network :)

One little 'difference' to windows - some fonts seem a bit unclear? Hardforums 1st page is a good example of this.

Thanks for all the help, let me know any other cool programs. Going to try sailing clicker soon.
 
One little 'difference' to windows - some fonts seem a bit unclear? Hardforums 1st page is a good example of this.
Click to expand...

It's called text anti-aliasing, and I love it to death. :D

You can change the settings in System Prefs > Appearance.
 
I used Entourage when I originally got my Mac but soon switched to Mail. I think Mail is a much better email client and the spam filter is excellent. I think it has a cleaner interface and is all around much better than Entourage.
 
Antialiasing makes some things look bad?

Entourage looked good because i could check my hotmail, but im playing with mail ATM.

Synced my t610 with address book via isync and bluetooth smooothly :)

Loving how i can read/write txt messages from my ibook!

Finished installing photoshop/dreamweaver/premiere so will try and get round to using sometime.

Airport works good, battery seems good to.

I still want an msn client that can tell me how many mails.

Still gettign used to OS X's networking - im using stuff of windows machines, and i havent found how to do equivilant of map a drive automatically yet.

I also want to stream music across netowrk - best way to acheive this?

Thanks
 
What do you mean by stream? Are you interested in turing it into a streaming radio station (with your mp3s) or just sharing the music files?
 
Originally posted by phrozenpenguin
Still gettign used to OS X's networking - im using stuff of windows machines, and i havent found how to do equivilant of map a drive automatically yet.
Click to expand...

glad things are working out for you for the most part and as for the question above HERE is something you might find usefull but I will warn you it could also cause an issue or two at the same time. What I would recomend is adding to your favorites and connecting when you NEED to and not just automaticaly and also remember to DISCONNECT from the drive when done. I have done it more than once, stayed connected to my PC at home on the wireless network and realized at work I didn't drop the drive. At least in 10.3 it isn't that big of an issue and use can ususally disconnect in a matter of a few seconds but in 10.2 it would litteraly take several (read 5+) minutes for the system to realize the drive I am trying to eject is no longer there...I would usually just reboot because it was faster ;)
 
FYI - PS CS is slower than 7.0

Whenever you do the hardware upgrade thing you'll definitely get a big boost. The 500Mhz iBook is disproportionately slow.

For doing the stuff you're doing max the RAM.
 
Going pretty well so far.
Battery life is pretty good, looks are awesome :)
Much heavier than my vaio picturebook (lol) but then i get much bigger screen size etc.

Didnt struggle to much in premiere 6.5 which i expected (altho well slow @ rendering, but i expected that.)

Biggest downer at the minute is i HATE the antialiasing......
Which I THINK makes the text look fuzzy....i realise this is a subjective opinion and dont want to start an arguement.

Just installed a prog which disabled AA, and now webpages look good but the applebar text looks pretty crap.
Oh well...

Itunes music sharing i will be playing with.
THe 10.3.3 update made networking better i think.
 
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