[ Mac] New Users

[Number45]

Are you a student?

I'm not one myself...

(Apparently quotes don't count towards the minimum post length, hence this unnecessarily long explanation...)

[JP]

I ordered Mac Office in work a couple of days back and with my staff discount it cost me a total of £17.31.

Handy really as I got fed up of waiting for the discounts/upgrades for the Mini and finally ordered one in work today. 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB, 160GB Serial ATA drive, SuperDrive 8x DL, Wireless Mighty Mouse & Keyboard for £614:33.

It would have been nice to of paid less or had upgraded hardware for the same price but I can't take any more from Windows and this does everything I need it to do.

It's not expected to turn up until somewhere between the 31st of Oct and 3rd Nov so I've got a bit of time left to get stuff ready.

What cables will I need to buy to connect it to my TV and to my AV set-up about 6 foot away from it?

I really can't wait for it to turn up now!!!

[JP]

Had a bit of a look into the cables now and I have two options with the videos cable but not sure if there are benefits with picking one over the other.

The choices I have are DVI>HDMI or DVI>VGA. Any benefits to going with one over the other?

[CMcK]

You should get a slightly better picture going the dvi to hdmi route.

[JP]

I've sorted out a HDMI cable for it now. Somebody told me that I should be able to connect it to via HDMI to my TV for the first boot instead of having to configure it using a monitor, has anybody here been able to connect theirs like that?

I've got another couple of questions which I can't find answers for online.

This one is probably a really stupid question so don't laugh! I've got quite quite a few emails that I want to keep hold of on my PC, when I set up my email account on the Mini (More than likely using Mail rather than Outlook) and use it the first time will emails that I have in my Outlook account end up on my Mac or are those actually on my PC rather than my ISPs server?

I'm asking as I have nothing but problems with with Outlook on my PC and have to repair my data files at least once a week as quite often it just freezes when receiving emails and I don't want to somehow copy any errors across to the Mac.

Has anybody burned PlayTV videos onto DVD using their Mac? I've got gigabytes of sports that I want to keep which are on my PS3 and I'd rather they were on DVDs.

I was wanting to use iDVD & iMovie to sort everything out but I've been told that I may be better off buying software?

I'm guessing that I won't be able to connect the PS3 & Mini via USB or wireless and I'll have to use something like a USB drive to transport them?

I'm not sure what the Mini is like for heat but we've got a spare wooden shelf under the TV which is about 7" x 15". Is this likely to be OK to have the Mini running inside? There isn't a door on the front so I'm hoping that it'll be OK.

I'm going to be getting an external hdd for the Mini sometime but wasn't sure if there was any advantage of going with Firewire rather than USB?

I wish it would hurry up and arrive as I'm dying to have a good play with it!!!

[Lyris]

My history with Macs is not good. People have told me I had a bias against them (despite a Mac Classic being my first computer ever when I was 3 or 4), but I've often found them to be machines which place form over function (see glossy screens on latest laptop range).

But, I have to say that I am liking Mac OS and have finally ordered a MacBook Pro. I need Mac OS to run a program (DVDafteredit) which isn't available on Windows, and I've been enjoying it.

[Pavey]

@ John.

Toast is what you want for dvd burning.

[JP]

Thanks Nick.

I've had a look into the latest Toast and it definately seems the way to go and you're not the only one to recommend it to me. As the cheapest I've seen it is around ?50 I'll have to wait and buy it at another time though.

Do you think it's worth me going for one of the older and cheaper version while I'm waiting?

[Brannigan]

John,

-The Mini doesn't put out much heat, so it should be fine.

-You can connect the ps3 and a Mac over wireless. A google search should tell you how. I've done it myself but can't remember the specifics.

-I'd recommend a firewire drive. They're definitely quicker than USB. Most firewire drives will have a USB connection too anyway. have a look at the Western Digital MyBook Home edition drives.

-Not sure about the other stuff.

Hope that helps!

[JP]

Thanks again.

Been looking into streaming between the Mini & PS3 after looking at a few different solutions I'm thinking of using Nullriver's Medialink as from what I can tell, it does everything I need it to do.

Has anybody used this or would anybody recommend a different solution?

[NekoFever]

First of all, unless you want some of the power user features of Toast, have a look at Burn. It's free and it does all the basic stuff, plus stuff like converting video files to DVD. I've never needed any of the extra features of Toast because that has suited me just fine.

I use MediaLink as well as Connect360 for my 360 and both work brilliantly. MediaLink doesn't quite have all the features of Connect360 - no access control, for example - but it's a lot newer and is updated pretty frequently. Nullriver has excellent support and will add things if people request them, so I assume it's on the way.

[CMcK]

John, regarding moving your e-mail to your Mac. Check the server settings in Outlook and see how long messages are left on the server for. It's very likely all the messages you want to keep are stored locally on your present computer.

Easiest way to move them is to send them to a webmail type account and then send them back to yourself later.

Exporting from Outlook to Mail isn't straightforward. There is software to do it but it'll cost you. The best bet is to use Opera or Thunderbird. Export your mail from Outlook into one of the above programs. Once you have it all there export it in the .mbox format. Burn to a disc and import them into Mail on the Mac.

There are a few methods here:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070712065953608&query=outlook% 2Bmail

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061104002244385&query=outlook%2Bmail

http://www.schwie.com/brad/?p=22

Also note that Outlook and Outlook Express are different and the method for moving depends on which one you are using.

[JP]

I've been looking into the two programmes more and luckily I can only find one thing which Connect360 does that I'd like MediaLink to do.

The only bad thing seems to be that MediaLink doesn't support Apple Lossless which is my preferred format for ripped audio. It's a shame it doesn't and it seems to be what a lot of users are for so hopefully it'll get an update sometime.

Thanks for that CMcK, I use Outlook.

I'll probably have a go at exporting the emails as I'd rather spend a bit of time getting the originals over rather than emailing them to myself.

I found this video which makes it as simple as possible for non technical people like me. That video doesn't mention it but I'm guessing that when I've got the emails over I'll be able to set up the Mail equivalent of Outlook rules to sort them out for me?

I'm guessing that I can probably transfer my rules across but I'd really rather start again to keep things as simple as possible for Mail and avoid any contrasting rules which may cause problems.

[NekoFever]

I just stuck an Apple Lossless file into iTunes to see if MediaLink would support it and it just showed up on the PS3 as 'Unsupported Data', so no, it doesn't work. I'm surprised transcoding hasn't been added yet because that was a pretty early feature on the PS3.

As for email, if you've got them stored locally in Windows try logging into your server with IMAP instead of POP. I know in Mail on OS X I can copy the mails from my local folders to the server and vice versa freely, so you might be able to copy it onto the server in Windows and then copy it back off on the Mac. IMAP is better anyway

[CMcK]

I found this video which makes it as simple as possible for non technical people like me. That video doesn't mention it but I'm guessing that when I've got the emails over I'll be able to set up the Mail equivalent of Outlook rules to sort them out for me?

I'm guessing that I can probably transfer my rules across but I'd really rather start again to keep things as simple as possible for Mail and avoid any contrasting rules which may cause problems.

I'm not sure what the rules in Outlook do but I would imagine the smart mail folders in Leopard Mail would be what you are after. Using Spotlight on the Mac actually makes it so easy to find things that I have gotten a bit lazy with regards to how I organise stuff. Other than just the basic movies, music, pictures and documents folders I don't see the point in making much effort. Being able to search through your mail so quickly is great. Even works without Mail being active. And the Spotlight menu makes a great appliction launcher as well. Hit command and space, start typing the name of the app and hit enter. Magic.