New Mac users forum: Pure MAC Newbie

You cannot cut and paste files in the Finder as you can in Explorer. To move or copy a file from one place to another, the Mac way is to open both the Target and Source folders, then drag and drop the file or folder.

The green button at the top does not expand the window to fill your screen. Very few windows need the full screen, so what that does is expand the window so it's large enough to handle the content. This will almost always leave some background visible.

You cannot see the size of a file or folder by holding your mouse over it. You must highlight the item and use Get Info. There are at least four ways to use Get Info, three of them involving the mouse.

You cannot selectively delete items that you have "stored" in the Trash. Sorry.

Get hold of a terrific book by David Pogue called "Switching to the Mac: Leopard Edition" (assuming the office is using Leopard. If not, just get the version that applies to the Mac operating system it is using.) This book's cover calls it "The Missing Manual" and "The book that should have been in the box". Boy, are they right. I looove my Mac but its Help feature sucks.
Nancy

I gather you can turn it on and can see the desktop and the dock. The bar with all the icons in it.

Do you have the password for the machine?

P

Files that you download will go to wherever your web browsers preferences are set to.
By default, this is the Download folder but you can change that by going to your browsers preferences.

Files that you download for your Mac will normally end in .zip or .dmg
If the file ends in .exe then it is not for your Mac.
If you double click a .dmg file (these are disk images) an icon that looks like a hard drive will appear on your desktop.
Double click that and you will find either an installer or the program itself. If an installer, double click it, if it's the actual program, drag it to your applications folder. Once it has copied there, double click it and it will run.

On the update subject. Go to the Apple menu, top left of screen, and choose About this Mac. That will tell you what operating system the machine is running.
Let us know what that is and we can talk updates, or not.

Anti-Virus. You don't need it

What Web Browser do you use?

The change from Windows to Mac is not that difficult, if you can do it with Windows, you can do it with a Mac. Just takes a little learning.
Post the answer to the above question and any other questions you may have.

P

unless you know what it is.

How do you know that you are running low on hard drive space?

How much is free.

What is it that you want to throw away?

P

is probably due to you having a bunch of programs open at the same time and only having 1GB of memory (RAM)
Many Windows users make the mistake of using the Red button on an open window to close an applications. This does not work on a Mac. All it does is close the window, the program continues to run and eat memory.

If you choose Apple\Shutdown and confirm the choice, the OS will shut down everything that is open, by itself. and then proceed to shut down the Mac.

The information you gave is good, but it does not address the Hard drive size and the amount of free space available on it.
Right click (Control + Click) the HD icon at the top right of the screen, and choose Get Info. There you will see the size of the HD and the space available. Space available is also shown at the bottom of every open Finder window.

The reason you do not need AV software yet is because there are no virus's out there that work on a Mac. That's not to say that there won't ever be any, just none now and for the last 11 years.

P

it says that you have 44.22GB of Hard Drive space free.

More that enough and is almost certainly not the cause of your slowdown.


RAM is memory, HD is storage.

The more RAM you have, the more programs you can have open at any one time and the machine will run better as it does not have to keep swapping data between the hard drive and the RAM.
With low amounts of RAM, the system uses the hard drive as a temporary storage area for things it wants to keep in memory and as it is slower to move data from RAM to HD, the system slows down.

P

a few url's might help here.

Chrome and Camino are just two other browsers that work on a Mac.

Firefox is pretty much cross platform, so URL's please and we'll see what we can do.

What version of Safari and Firefox are you using. Menu Safari\About Safari and ditto for Firefox

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If you do have Tiger (10.4), make sure it's updated to 10.4.11 and then you should be able to install Safari 4.1.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1045

I think it will take you about a week to get used to things on a mac. It is much more user friendly. If you are a power user on the pc, then you might have to relearn some keyboard shortcuts but you can expect a much more stable system.

that a PC has that a Mac doesn't seem to have and we'll see if we can find them for you.

Playing around is a really good way to find out things.


P

Save As has always allowed you to change the name of a file.

The Save As dialog box also has a New Folder option.

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dialog box but disagree with the MS Office apps not having a New Folder option.

It could be that you are not seeing the full Save As dialog box. At the top of the Save As window, where it says "Save As:", at the right of the filename field there is a dropdown arrow.
When the arrow is in the Down position, you only see a reduced window. Moving the arrow to the Up position, by clicking on it, reveals a whole bunch of other options, including New Folder.

I have not found an application, so far this evening, that does not have the New Folder option

P