Moving from a PC to an iMac...help!

[mascarpone]

I'm hoping someone can help me. To cut a long story short, the PC died a horrible death. I freelance from home and use the computer to do practically everything. DH persuaded me to have an iMac instead on the grounds that it would be really really easy and intuitive and shiny!

I agree - it is lovely and shiny. The problem is that I don't really know how to use it and it is making work a rather frustrating experience as I am currently working at half speed.

So, what I think I need is some good information/tutorials to get to grips with it. I have already tried the tutorials on Pages and Numbers from the apple website but I think I need something more basic! For example, I managed to install a font using the help files but it took hours because I couldn't find Font Book (which turned out to be somewhere really obvious - if there was an eejit smiley it would be here). Otherwise perhaps one of those books like the 'For Dummies' if anyone can recommend a good one??

Also, can anyone recommend me a good printer? Would like one that can do B&W and colour and scans to replace my ancient laser. Ideally it should be wireless so DH can print from his iPad. Oh and it needs to fit on the top of my filing cabinet. And look nice

Any tips would be very welcome. Thank you

If you are near enough to an Apple store, they do some really good courses, starting at quite basic levels. You can book online.

Thanks for that. The problem is that I am about 40mins drive from a store...but it might come to that yet!

learning by trial and error is fine but at the moment, it's taking so long to get anything done that it's going to be a small pay packet this month...

If you're used to a PC, I would definitely recommend getting Microsoft Office for Mac rather than using iWork. I have both and I remember it took me ages to get my head around Pages. The Office is practically the same.

Welcome to the world of Mac, you'll love it when you get the hang of it.

Don't go for an HP printer, the wireless never works, we got one free with my 17 Macbook pro laptop, it was relegated to the garage after 4 weeks, lots of cartridges and frustration.

Go for an Epson, our old Epson Aculaser 900 we bought came with a free Epson that lasted 8 years.

We currently have the Epson SX400, 4 years old, scan, copy, print, brilliant and economical if you use the Rhino long life cartridges. Black, shiny and on a shelf, there will be a newer one out.

Word:Mac 2011 is nothing like Word 2010 for PC, has far less functionality and is a lot harder to navigate IMO. I use Word 2010 at work and the Mac version at home infuriates me.

We changed from a PC to a iMac 18 months ago and I still don't feel very at home on it TBH. It isn't intuitive at all, it just makes you do everything how it wants instead of you being in charge is how it feels to me. I didn't know about the Apple stores running courses, I could desperately do with help using Iphoto as I can't get my head round it at all, so I'm going to enquire about that.

Ali Thanks for that. I'll have a look for one on the internet. We have had Epson before and had a good experience.

WhoKnows I'm glad it's not just me! I'm hoping it's a bit like when I learnt to touch type - to start with it feels like you're going backwards speed wise, but soon you get much faster than you were before. I think I'm going to stick with Pages and Numbers for the time being as I suspected that Word etc for Mac would be different to what I'm used to anyway...

I post on threads about Macs every now and then and the vast majority of people always say they love it and would never go back, but it just isn't like it for me.

I will concede that it has many advantages (fast to boot up, less virus problems, more stable etc) but I am a long way from loving it. However we are stuck with it so I am doing my best to get on with it.

We moved from PC to Mac 18 months ago at work. Pages and Keynote are brilliant, just different. IMO though Numbers doesn't hold a candle to Excel for what I use it for (although I don't know how Excel for Mac stacks up against Excel for Windows. I've done some heavy number crunching in Excel which I couldn't have done in Numbers). I get the feeling it's there because you can't sell a productivity suite without a spreadsheet program, but it doesn't exactly fit with the general arty creative bent that Apple trend towards. Definitely the poor cousin of the iWorks family.

We have an HP Photosmart B110 in the office, which plays nicely with Mac and PC over the wireless network, although we haven't tried from iPad actually.

If you don't get on with Numbers, the free option is OpenOffice/LibreOffice which is open source. On the version I'm running, "Calc" (the spreadsheet tool) takes it's cues from Excel rather than Numbers, so if you do struggle, that might be worth trying before you spring money on Excel for Mac. I'm fairly sure you install just Calc as well, without installing Word Processor and Presentation as well, so you don't get cluttered up with additional unnecessary software.

Also, get an external hard drive and turn on Time Machine. It's so ludicrously easy and runs in the background that it's criminal not to. It just works. If the Mac ever goes squeaky pop or the hard drive fails, it's all backed up. And you can recover individual files that you're deleted and trace back through versions of files (and even emails) which is properly awesome.

Huntin ,how often do you plug in your external drive to time machine and do you have to have an apple external drive

No, just an external hard drive that you plug into a USB socket. An external drive with a firewire connection would also work. Time Machine will also find storage over the network if you have a NAS box.

You can get the Apple Time Capsule which is basically an Apple Airport wireless access point with a hard drive in. It amounts to an Apple branded NAS box.