Help! Macintosh for PC Dummies!

guncollector

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First, I'm PC guy, always have been. (Note: I know the Mac system is considered "superior", but what can I say, Bill Gates was the savvier businessman.)

But, my 4 yr. old daughter has an iMac (G3/233Mhz) that was given to her a few years back before she could even really take advantage of this machine.

Now, I'm trying to set it up for her to play educational software and games (believe it or not I was able to hook it up to my Linksys Router to enable the broadband hookup), but some things on this Mac OS is driving me nuts (my "Apple" friends say its simply too logical and that's why I'm having problems--sheesh)!

Okay, here are my questions:
1) There's not R-mouse button!? Heck there's only one button for chrissakes. How do you get "Menus" like a PC's r-mouse button would work?

2) Now do you switch between "windows" (for lack of a better term)? The old PC ALT-TAB doesn't work, and I have to manual move between open windows now! Aaarrggghhh!

3) How do I find the hard drive "explorer" or whatever Apple calls it?

4) What's up with no serial port for the printer? This thing only works with USB? Can this iMac plus directly into my HP printer's free USB port (serial in use by my PC) and share printer without problems?

Any/all help, tips, tricks for a maladjusted PC novice to the Mac system is greatly appreciated!
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James S

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Originally posted by guncollector:
First, I'm PC guy, always have been. (Note: I know the Mac system is considered "superior", but what can I say, Bill Gates was the savvier businessman.)

But, my 4 yr. old daughter has an iMac (G3/233Mhz) that was given to her a few years back before she could even really take advantage of this machine.

Now, I'm trying to set it up for her to play educational software and games (believe it or not I was able to hook it up to my Linksys Router to enable the broadband hookup), but some things on this Mac OS is driving me nuts (my "Apple" friends say its simply too logical and that's why I'm having problems--sheesh)!



OK, step one, ignore your annoying friends. You'll be able to use the Mac just fine and if they can't encourage and help you then stop asking them
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Okay, here are my questions:
1) There's not R-mouse button!? Heck there's only one button for chrissakes. How do you get "Menus" like a PC's r-mouse button would work?


2 options, buy a 2 button mouse for cheap. Any USB 2 button mouse will work fine, even those for "windows" The latest version of MacOS X even fully supports the scroll wheels without any additional software. On older MacOS you'll need software that comes with the mouse or a program called "USB Overdrive" to enable it.

Second option, and the one most mac users do is to hold the control key down when clicking, this brings up the "Contextual Menu" that you are used to getting with the right click.



2) Now do you switch between "windows" (for lack of a better term)? The old PC ALT-TAB doesn't work, and I have to manual move between open windows now! Aaarrggghhh!



Sounds like you are running the old mac os. There isn't a keyboard shortcut on the old one. If you upgrade to OSX then you'll find that command-tab does exactly the same as option tag on windows. Again, there are shareware utilites that make it work exactly like windows, but I've never used them as I'm not used to the windows interface.

EDIT: more info here! Also, there is the application menu in the upper right hand corner that will let you switch between all running applications. Switching to one will bring all the windows with that app forward, unlike in windows where you can have the windows layered however you want. You can tear off that menu in OS9 and above by holding down the option key (I think, you may have to experiment) and dragging it down, it will become a floating window that you can use to switch between apps anytime. I always used it like this. Mac OSX lets you layer windows exactly the same as windows does in case you feel like upgrading at some point and provides the Dock which functions similarly to the bottom bar in windows.



3) How do I find the hard drive "explorer" or whatever Apple calls it?



EDIT: Ooops, missed this one. The equivalent program is called the Finder. It's always running. Click on the desktop, or any finder window open to bring it to the front. (Or select it from the drop down menu at the upper right hand corner of the menu bar) You'll find that any hard disks or removeable things like CD's get mounted to an icon on the desktop. (sometimes this can be a pain to find if there is a lot of garbage on the desktop, you can select "Hide Others" from the application menu to make all the other windows dissappear until you're ready for them again) Just double click on that to browse that disk.

The Mac default view is to view by large icons, which is great if you only have 4 things on the disk, if you want a more windows like approach select "view by list" from the view menu, or the contextual menu for the window. Then you'll see something you recognize with disclosure triangles and the whole thing.



4) What's up with no serial port for the printer? This thing only works with USB? Can this iMac plus directly into my HP printer's free USB port (serial in use by my PC) and share printer without problems?



Almost certainly yes. Most of the HP printers had the capability of sharing between their 2 ports, but that will depend on the specific HP model. You'll also probably need to go to HP's website and download and install the Mac drivers for that model printer. HP has had pretty good Mac support over the years so it's almost a given that it will work if you can find the right files on their website which is a bigger challenge than getting it to work
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If you can't get it to work over USB and yet it says serial is supported you'll need to get a USB/Serial adaptor. I don't think this will be necessary, USB should work fine, but if it turns out to be then http://www.keyspan.com/ are the ones I use to get more serial ports, they work great.



Any/all help, tips, tricks for a maladjusted PC novice to the Mac system is greatly appreciated!
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">One of the best places to find Mac software is http://www.versiontracker.com/ They have a really big library and you can search for everything you need. There is a lot of Mac shareware, and I would not be afraid to try it. A lot of it is very high quality stuff (And I'm not just saying that becuase I make a living writing Mac shareware either!) But you will want to ignore the user reviews at that site almost completely. There seems to be a group of younger people that make horrible posts about everything there in the last year or so. So thats not a good source of additional info.
 
D

**DONOTDELETE**

Guest
Hey James, I downloaded 'Safari' the new apple browser - it wasn't that much faster, and then permanently 'unexpectedly quit' -- was hard to get it off the emac, till I pressed 'eject' from a pull down menu and it disappeared, from most places..(I thought the 'eject' command was for the discs?) ..I see a great many people had this problem, my advice; stick with Internet Explorer..any comments?
 

guncollector

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Hey, James, thanks!

I'm going to try your advice tonight. Unfortunately, I have the older Mac OS 8.1 on this iMac, and an old, older version of Internet Explorer for Mac (like 4.1 or something).

Speaking of IE Mac (4.1?), it doesn't load many web pages well, especially ones with password protection fields. I get an "Unknown Algorhythm" message or some sort when I try and enter the info into the fields and hit enter. Any hints?

Sounds like I may just need to upgrade my Mac OS and Explorer. Does anyone know what the best Mac OS is for an older iMac with 266Mhz and 64MB RAM (soon to be adding an additional 128MB)??

TIA!
 

James S

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Ted, I actually rarely use IE. It's so slow as to be distracting to me. My main browser before Safari was released was OmniWeb from http://www.omnigroup.com/ It's also free and was very fast and reliable. It didn't render everything correctly though, and for some heavy javascript sites I did have to switch to mozilla periodically.

My experience with Safari is very different than yours. I'm using it right now as a matter of fact. I find it to be noticeably faster than IE on the mac and considerably more reliable. I have had it crash once, but considering the amount of time I spend on the internet thats not bad. It also has run every java or javascript enabled site I've thrown at it without any trouble. There are a few strange rendering issues with very complex style sheets, but they haven't made any page unreadable to me, just a little strange. Apple is sitting on fixes for most of the things I've noted, just hasn't done a new update yet. I think they are saving their bandwidth since the last big program update I did from them was over 100 meg!

What happened about the eject button was this. What you downloaded was a disk image. Instead of copying the program into your applications folder (No installer necessary, just drag and drop it to wherever you want it) you ran it off the mounted image. Since it's like a disk you can indeed make the OS unmount it by pressing the eject button. If that was the first release you tried out I would definitely try the latest one, and this time copy it onto your machine before running it
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Ron: You can update that machine to 8.6 for free (I think) Which was a very good and stable OS release. But I would really recommend going up to 9.1. You should be able to pick up a copy of that inexpensively somewhere, or mail order it. With 128meg it will run 9.1 very well and that is also a good and stable release. I wouldn't bother going to 9.2 or higher on that machine unless you're going to update to OSX.

If the machine is mostly destined to run children's games and such then I don't see a compelling reason right now to update it to OSX. most of the older CDROM games will still run on it, and most of the newer stuff is still available for the older OS. You can still run all of them on OSX, but the 128meg is really a minimum for running it on that machine.

And the upgrade will cost you more than the one to 9.1.

However, the machine will definitely run the latest version of OSX. You can bring it completely up to date. Certain things will not run very well on it, like OpenGL stuff or full screen quick time movies or something like that, but the rest of it should be reasonably fast.
 

Saaby

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Awe...but OS X is so much NICER! And Unix based!

My brother is constantly making snide remarks about it but I'm transplatform compatable, that is, I can use a Mac or a PC. I like both. I use PC for day to day because I come from a PC family. Right now I'd love a Mac (With a third party mouse
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) as 100% of what I do on a PC can be done on a Mac. Well, except maybe run RedHat but OS X is Unix based so it'd be a tradeoff I'd be willing to take.

My only beef with Macs is that I can't build one from scratch and, short of getting a PowerMac, I can't just swap out the soundcard or video card or... (You can do ALL that with a PowerMac right?)

Back to the questions. Keep the fact that I do most my computing in Windows land in mind and take these answers:
1. (No R.Mouse button) Hit Apple+Mouse button. It's an iMac. It has USB. It'll take a normal, Logitech USB mouse. Right button will then work like a right button.

2. Alt+Tab works in OSX. In "Classic" OS (What is the Technical name James?) there should be an icon on the upper upper upper right hand corner of the screen. Click this. IT will drop a menu with all your programs listed.

3. "Finder" is the Mac equivalent of "Explorer." Double click on "iMac" or "Hard Drive" or similar icon. You're in explorer. The closest you're going to get to explorer (With folders down the side of the screen) is to click "View" and then "As list" use the triangles to expand folders.

4. iMacs were the first Macs to be USB only. Why not hook the printer up to your router and then both computers can share it over the network. Your router does have a built in print server doesn't it? If not you can set Windows up to share it and print to it through the network.
 
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