Mac Users - Tips and Tricks

[NewCasa]

Finally switched over. Got a macbook pro 13" and a 1tb time machine. Totally thrilled with the decision and I'm totally not interested in hearing from ANY PC users on how their computers are better. They're not. Period.

What I am interested in hearing about is tips and tricks on macbooks. To date, my experience is very limited and I'm quite interested in hearing what other people have discovered that will make their macs more useful, friendly, etc.

I've downloaded and installed open office. This might take a little getting used to, but it may well be a good replacement for ms office. The only thing really missing is a contact manager / mail / calendar that's as good as outlook. That's a good place to start - anyone know of a freeware version for mac?

Also, any apps, tips and tricks as I said would be great. Hopefully this will be a good thread for people to share their ideas. Thanks

[KARM]

Address Book, iCal and Mail are all integrated (but separate) apps that are pre-installed. Mail shares email addresses that are in the address book and you can add attendees for iCal events straight from your address book as well as emailing those events through Mail. There's nothing free (that I know of) that works as well on the Mac as just using those 3 programs.

[NewCasa]

Thanks Karm. It's a whole new world for me using these things, but I'm going to check those out for sure.

Here's an interesting article I found on setting up a new out-of-the-box macbook pro:

http://www.macyourself.com/2010/04/28/new-to-mac-top-16-things-to-do-when-first-setting-up-your-mac/

[Hans]

I prefer Chrome as a browser as you can synchronize everything online. That includes your gmail account, bookmarks, settings, saved auto fills, saved paswords, and any other settings.
It's very handy if you use multiple computers, as you can synchronize everything without having to worry about not having access to your web stuff.

Speaking of that, another handy tool is syncplicity. It allows free online synchronization of documents etc... I use it on all my machines to keep the information available between them, and it comes with 2 GB of free storage. You can even sync your desktop so they all contain the same information.

[NewCasa]

Speaking of gmail - right now I'm using a hotmail account for email and I'm thinking I should probably switch to gmail since hotmail is giving me a hard time every time I try to set it up on any new device. Do you recommend gmail as the best for personal email? Is there a simple way to port my hotmail over?

[Hans]

http://www.wikihow.com/Switch-from-Hotmail-to-Gmail

[NewCasa]

Thanks Hans. Getting a little late, but looks good - I'll give it a shot tomorrow night.

[Hans]

Never tried it myself, but it looks good.

[KDawg]

Mozilla Thunderbird is a great email client that I used to use. It can be downloaded for free for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can also download contact manager add-ons for it.