I ditched Microsoft (for the most part) about 10 months ago and got me a Mac Book Pro (sweet tool!). I use it everyday for about 90+% of my everyday needs however there are some apps I can't get for Mac that exist only for MS based systems and I also need it to hop onto MS server domains.
I installed MS Vista Business on my Mac with the use of Parallels and man it?s great. I have none of the bitching issues most people encounter since parallels emulates all the device drivers and pipes all requests out an inbound through the devices which are handled by Tiger OSX.
I have 2 Gig of Ram and Vista loads super fast and behaves quicker than the installs on brute powered PC's.
I luv my Mac and M$ can die peacefully for the crappy abomination they have unleashed at a premium on the public for essentially a Beta product namely being Vista or better still...Hasta La Vista.
So I'm 16 (17 next month) and a junior in high school and im eventually going to have to buy a laptop for college. Now ive been using windows my entire life and i would consider myself "ok" with windows know-how. but ive noticed that windows has many problems, as im sure many of you have also noticed. The computer i use now is the latest one i bought. I bought it in May 2003 and it came with windows XP home. 4 years later, the thing lags, its slow, i get tons of different types of error messages just by booting it up, and i often run into the "Windows Explorer has encountered a problem" message, which completely freezes my taskbar. i always end up having to Ctrl-alt-del and maunally ending applications. The thing that annoys me the MOST is the fact that after you end a program through ctrl-alt-del, it asks you if you want to "send an error report to windows," giving you the FALSE hope that they will actually do anything to help you. Anyways, that was my little rant on windows.
Now, Ive been thinking about getting a macbook instead of what i initially considered, a windows laptop. But of course, with the introduction of Windows Vista, and my extreme lack of knowledge for Mac OSX, im lost on which to pick. With a new windows vista laptop, im probably going to face some new things that ive never seen before, but with a windows background, ill probably pick it up more easily. With a Mac its a different story. I have NEVER really used a Mac in my entire life. The only time i used Macs was in 3rd grade when i went to the computer lab to play reading rabbit. no one i know has a Mac, except my teachers, but i doubt theyll let me fiddle with the computer that contains all our grades. so im pretty much compeltely lost. Im just scared that ill pick a Mac, and then end up being completely lost with it in college and have to think to myself, "i shouldve stuck with windows."
*yea ok macs can run windows, im probably not going to do that anyways, so dont mention it.
But, i did read the other thread "Long time PC user thinking of switching to Mac." And based on the first page of posts that i read i learned that the mac consists of primarily 5 folders - Applications, Documents, Music, Pictures, Movies. Now on to the questions.
I guess to install a program, it would be like insert a cd and install. but how do i open it?
does it just show up in the application folder?
Where are these folders?
How do i find my files, do they all just go in one of the folders?
is there something like the C://Program files like in windows?
Does mac use the same file types?
can i transfer mac files to windows?
aiport extreme in just a fancy way of saying "802.11 wifi" right?
In windows, all open applications show up in a task bar, does mac have something like that?
i probably have more questions but i cant think of them right now. thanks in advance.

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