Product Description

Here, David Pogue explains how Windows users can make a relatively trouble-free switch to Mac OS X. Novices and power users alike will learn how to move files; adapt to Mac versions of programs such as Microsoft Office, FileMaker, Photoshop and Quicken; find familiar controls in the new system; set up a network to share files with PCs and Macs; and adapt old printers, scanners, and other peripherals. An important part of this book is Appendix A, the "Where'd It Go?" Dictionary, which includes an alphabetical listing of every familiar Windows feature, and where you can find its equivalent in Mac OS X.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #523546 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 447 pages

About the Author
David Pogue, a Yale grad and former Broadway conductor, writes the back-page column for Macworld magazine. He's the author or coauthor of 15 computer, humor, and music books, including Macs for Dummies, Opera for Dummies, Classical Music for Dummies, Magic for Dummies, Macworld Mac Secrets, Hard Drive (a novel), The Microsloth Joke Book, and Tales from the Tech Line. Mia Farrow, Carly Simon, Harry Connick, Jr., and Stephen Sondheim are among his computer students.

Excerpted from Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual by David Pogue. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 5 - Five Ways to Transfer Your Files

A huge percentage of "switchers" do not, technically speaking, switch. More often, they add. They may get a Macintosh (and get into the Macintosh), but they keep the old Windows PC around, at least for a while. If you’re in that category, get psyched. It turns out that communicating with a Windows PC is one of the Mac’s most polished talents.

That’s especially good news in the early days of your Mac experience. You probably have a good deal of stuff on the old Windows machine that you’d like to bring over to the Mac. Somewhere along the line, somebody probably told you how easy this is to do. In fact, the Mac’s reputation for simplicity may even have played a part in your decision to switch.

In any case, this chapter describes the process of building a bridge from the PC to the Mac, so that you can bring all your files and settings into their new home. It also tells you where to put all of them. (The following chapter is dedicated to the slightly hairier process of getting your email and addresses copied over.)

As it turns out, files can take one of several roads from your old PC to your new Mac. For example, you can transfer them on a disk (such as a CD or Zip disk), by a network, or as an attachment to an email message.

Transfers by Disk
One way to transfer Windows files to the Mac is to put them onto a disk that you then pop into the Mac. (Although Windows can’t read Mac disks without help from special software, the Mac can read Windows disks.)

This disk can take any of these forms:
• A floppy disk. Apple eliminated built-in floppy drives from its computers in 1997, but any Mac can be equipped with an external, add-on floppy drive for about $60. Of course, if all of your old Windows files fit on a floppy disk, you must be a casual PC user indeed!

• An external hard drive. If you have an external USB or IEEE 1394 (what Apple calls FireWire) hard drive, you’re in great shape. While it’s connected to the PC, drag files and folders onto it. Then unhook the drive from the PC, attach it to the Mac, and marvel as its icon pops up on your desktop, its contents ready for dragging to your Mac’s built-in hard drive. (An iPod music player works great for this process, too, because it is a FireWire hard drive.)

The only downside here is that USB hard drives are pretty slow, and not very many PCs have FireWire connectors.

A Zip, Jaz, or Peerless drive. One great thing about these various backup drives from Iomega is that they’re cross-platform. Copy stuff onto a disk while the drive is connected to the PC. Then, if the drive has a USB or FireWire connector, simply move the whole drive over to the Mac. (For best results, install Iomega’s Macintosh driver software beforehand.)

Unfortunately, if your drive connects to the PC using a parallel connector, scratch this idea off the list; the Mac has no parallel port. (Note: You can’t use USB 2.0 disk drives with the Mac, either.)

• A CD or DVD. If your Windows PC has a CD or DVD burner, here’s another convenient method. Burn a disc in Windows, eject it, and then pop it into the Mac (see Figure 5-1). As a bonus, you wind up with a backup of your data (the disc itself).

Note: If you’re given a choice of file format when you burn the disc in Windows, choose ISO 9660. That’s the standard format that the Macintosh can read.

• Move the hard drive itself. This is a grisly, very technical maneuver best undertaken by serious wireheads—but it can work. You can install your PC’s hard drive directly into a Power Mac, as long as it was prepared using the older FAT or FAT32 formatting scheme. (The Mac can read FAT hard drives, but not NTFS hard drives.)

When you insert a Windows-formatted disk, whatever the type, its icon appears at the upper-right corner of your desktop, where Mac disks like to hang out. (If it doesn’t appear, you or someone you love has probably fiddled with the "Show these items on the desktop" settings in the Finder→Preferences dialog box.)

Transfers by Network
Here’s one of the best features of Mac OS X: It can "see" shared disks and folders on Windows PCs that are on the same network. Seated at the Mac, you can open or copy files from a PC. In fact, you can go in the other direction, too: Your old PC can see shared folders on your Mac.

This really isn’t a networking book, but there’s enough room for a crash course.

Ethernet Networks
Most people connect their personal computers using either of two connection systems: Ethernet or Wi-Fi (that is, 802.11b or, in Apple’s terminology, AirPort).

If you connect all of the Macs, PCs, and Ethernet printers in your small office to a central Ethernet hub—a compact $25 box with jacks for five, ten, or even more computers and printers—you’ve got yourself a very fast, very reliable network. (Most people wind up trying to hide the Ethernet hub in the closet, and then running the wiring either along the edges of the room or inside the walls.)

You can buy Ethernet cables, plus the Ethernet hub, in any computer store or (less expensively) from an Internet-based mail-order house. Hubs aren’t platform-specific. (And a word of advice: All recent Macs offer built-in 100BaseT or even Gigabit Ethernet cards, so don’t hobble your network speed by buying a slower, 10baseT hub.)

Customer Reviews

Suits all needs
Even if you are not switching, this book provides accurate information on Mac OS X and the technical help for transferring documents to a Windows computer. David Pogue, my favorite mac writer, known for his vivid style, won't let you down. Highly recommended.