Moving my Mom to Mac

D

dotVIBE

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Hey guys,

Long story, but anyways. Dad is building a new house, and i'm heavily involved in the home automation, new home network, home theater systems and new computer systems.

Now, my mom's most serious hobby is messing about with her Nikon DSLR, and then photoshopping some pics. Then she sometimes do some massive canvas prints of macro shots, or some Powerpoint slideshows for church and so on. You get the picture.

Now, it's taken some time, and she's sorta got the XP thing down. She can cut a disk with Nero, and do the basics in CS2.

Now in the new house, I want to give her a Macbook Pro, with a full keyboard, mighty mouse and a 24" cinematic on a kensington swivel base. I want to hook a mac mini to the HT receiver, with wireless trackball etc.

Now. Mac is supposed to be easy right? I have no experience with mac, but me being me, and having access to you brainiacs, i don't foresee too many problems in hooking it all up.

But will she be able to operate it? or will she be cursing my name for months while I train her as I train myself on leopard OS (installation in May next year only)?
 
My experience has been that for a novice OSX was no easier than XP.
 
My mother took to OsX like a duck to water.

iPhoto and its big sibling Aperture are two great mac-only apps available to photographers.

What is this HT receiver you intend on hooking the mini up to? I've got one hooked up to my plasma and it's great - the next version of frontrow should be even better than the last.
 
dotVIBE said:
Hey guys,

Long story, but anyways. Dad is building a new house, and i'm heavily involved in the home automation, new home network, home theater systems and new computer systems.

Now, my mom's most serious hobby is messing about with her Nikon DSLR, and then photoshopping some pics. Then she sometimes do some massive canvas prints of macro shots, or some Powerpoint slideshows for church and so on. You get the picture.

Now, it's taken some time, and she's sorta got the XP thing down. She can cut a disk with Nero, and do the basics in CS2.

Now in the new house, I want to give her a Macbook Pro, with a full keyboard, mighty mouse and a 24" cinematic on a kensington swivel base. I want to hook a mac mini to the HT receiver, with wireless trackball etc.

Now. Mac is supposed to be easy right? I have no experience with mac, but me being me, and having access to you brainiacs, i don't foresee too many problems in hooking it all up.

But will she be able to operate it? or will she be cursing my name for months while I train her as I train myself on leopard OS (installation in May next year only)?
Click to expand...

She'll have to buy a Mac Version of Photoshop. Not sure if you can upgrade from a PC version, or she could run the current one in Parallels.

Secondly, don't buy a Mac Cinema display. Buy an HP, Dell or Samsung.
Installed my 30 inch Dell today and it is beautiful. It has a 92% colour
gamut vs the 72% Apple offers. Since your mom is in photo editing,
the richer colours will help - Dell and HP offer 92%.

Mac is pretty easy. NO BSing about with firewalls, antiviruses, registry settings, defragmenters - maintenance woes are out.

Hardware support. If your mom scans SLR negatives, your scanner may not work with Mac OS X.
 
Cool. Thx bwana.

HT receiver as in Amp, I'm not sure yet. Maybe a NAD, maybe Integra. Or even a high end Yamaha.
 
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Yeah PeterCH, that's a big part of my reckoning. No more crap going wrong out of nowhere, as XP is wont to do. She has a D80 DSLR, so it's all digital, so scanning is all easy.

Will look into the monitors. Probably get a Dell then. pity, it would've been nice to keep it all mac. Can you believe that you cannot get a OEM dock for a macbook pro? what is up with that?
 
dotVIBE said:
Yeah PeterCH, that's a big part of my reckoning. No more crap going wrong out of nowhere, as XP is wont to do. She has a D80 DSLR, so it's all digital, so scanning is all easy.

Will look into the monitors. Probably get a Dell then. pity, it would've been nice to keep it all mac. Can you believe that you cannot get a OEM dock for a macbook pro? what is up with that?
Click to expand...
Dell and Mac monitors are equally good imo so she wont go wrong with either.

If you had a bluetooth keyboard and mouse what would you need a dock for?
 
The bluetooth keyboard does not seem to be a full keyboard. Oh it's not the end of the world, I know, it's just kinda weird.
 
dotVIBE said:
The bluetooth keyboard does not seem to be a full keyboard. Oh it's not the end of the world, I know, it's just kinda weird.
Click to expand...
If you pick up one of the pervious model they are full size. Mind you, I'm actually considering getting one of those nice compact new ones now that I've a glowing review on it.
 
dotVIBE said:
The bluetooth keyboard does not seem to be a full keyboard. Oh it's not the end of the world, I know, it's just kinda weird.
Click to expand...
They left out the numeric keypad AFAIK.

Mac is definitely easier for the less literate because it is more intuitive. That's not to say it lacks sophistication.
 
yeah, that's what i'm counting on. The fact that it's more intuitive.
 
yeah, not cheap though. I'm waiting till the last moment to buy one of those for the house, as I want it to have as many HDMI ports as possible. By then the Mac Mini should also be available with an HDMI port, though that's not critical. That's why I'm looking at Integra, which is Onkyo's elite line. Onkyo is usually ahead of the pack with the newest tech.
 
bwana said:
Dell and Mac monitors are equally good imo so she wont go wrong with either.

If you had a bluetooth keyboard and mouse what would you need a dock for?
Click to expand...

Mac monitors are outdated. They are not HDCP compliant (so forget HD movies when the time comes) and many of the HP/Dell models have 92% NTSC colour gamut vs 72% of standard monitors. You'll also save a bit of money going via one of the alternative routes. The HDCP is reason enough NOT to go the Cinema Display route.
 
Skeptik said:
They left out the numeric keypad AFAIK.

Mac is definitely easier for the less literate because it is more intuitive. That's not to say it lacks sophistication.
Click to expand...

The simpler an OS the better. If less sophistication means less time spent recovering Windoze crashes and OS catastrophes, then Mac is less sophisticated and good for that :).
 
dotVIBE said:
Yeah PeterCH, that's a big part of my reckoning. No more crap going wrong out of nowhere, as XP is wont to do. She has a D80 DSLR, so it's all digital, so scanning is all easy.
Click to expand...

Just thought that she may have a collection of SLR negatives. My mother has a collection of Canon shot negatives spanning 30 years. Many of them still need to be digitised and its a pity that both of my Canon scanners don't work with Mac OSX.

The Dell has a nice silver stand which fits in with the Mac Pro or the Macbook Pro.
 
PeterCH said:
Just thought that she may have a collection of SLR negatives. My mother has a collection of Canon shot negatives spanning 30 years. Many of them still need to be digitised and its a pity that both of my Canon scanners don't work with Mac OSX.

The Dell has a nice silver stand which fits in with the Mac Pro or the Macbook Pro.
Click to expand...

Most Canon scanners work in OS X, you gotta find the CanoScan toolbox for mac 'cuz the scanners don't "just work" when plugged in. Thats a Canon thing tho'.

I'm a liitle bit confused why you want to get a MBP and a mini? Sounds to me like your mom will be better off with a iMac and ?tv.
You get a 24" screen with the new front row (Leopard) and photo syncing straight from iPhoto to the HT setup via ?tv including HD and optical digital out.
Looks like it will all work out of the box too?

Does your mom really need to be mobile?

The reason there isn't a dock for the MBP's is that they are designed to work great on its own. If the requirement is for a bigger screen, get the iMac.
 
BobJones said:
I'm a liitle bit confused why you want to get a MBP and a mini? Sounds to me like your mom will be better off with a iMac and ?tv.
You get a 24" screen with the new front row (Leopard) and photo syncing straight from iPhoto to the HT setup via ?tv including HD and optical digital out.
Looks like it will all work out of the box too?

Does your mom really need to be mobile?

The reason there isn't a dock for the MBP's is that they are designed to work great on its own. If the requirement is for a bigger screen, get the iMac.
Click to expand...
I also though the Tv might be a viable option - unless she'd like to do some proper computing with it too. I certainly dont regret getting mini in lieu of a Tv purely for the versatility (even though the missus insists on playing those windows games on our plasma :eek:).

The MBP and an external screen are a great combo - the extra real-estate comes in really handy if you're using Aperture (and I presume Lightroom too) and I regularly take an older powerbook with me on shoots.

Then again I do have a natural bias towards laptops :)
 
Yeah the ?tv would have worked great, but my mom might need to be able to run powerpoint, meaning i might need to be able to install bootcamp. That and the fact that I want to be able to browse HTML pages on the plasma.
 
dotVIBE said:
Yeah the ?tv would have worked great, but my mom might need to be able to run powerpoint, meaning i might need to be able to install bootcamp. That and the fact that I want to be able to browse HTML pages on the plasma.
Click to expand...
Slightly O/t but Powerpoint runs quite well on a Mac as part of Microsofts Mac Office.

However imo keynote (as part of the iWork suite) is better and you can save to powerpoint format if needs be. :)
 
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