Comments on: the switch, extended

By: damselfly

damselfly — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:22:27 +0000

Thanks Kenneth, there's a couple in there I haven't heard about, so will definitely take a look. I have a copy of the GIMP, but haven't installed it yet.

Must admit, the switch to Mac has made me very conscious of preferring software which has both PC and Mac models, just so I can switch between the two machines with minimum re-learning.

By: Kenneth Rapp

Kenneth Rapp — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:02:59 +0000

There's the core program which opens everything, and you should be able to open each program individually as well if you have the suite. Writing: Take a look at a program called CopyWrite, which has a free-limited version and is a great way to keep documents organized. I haven't been able to find anything that does the same for Windows, yet. FTP: look at Cyberduck. Graphics: Your best bet, if you can't (cough) buy Adobe, is The Gimp. I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend it only because I haven't quite gotten the hang of the workflows myself, but it is a very good free program. Layouts: Scribus. Haven't used it. Vector: Inkscape. Haven't used it. download.com has an entire mac section. Offline storage: dropbox has proven very useful for cross-machine synchronizing. And also, Google's software is all mac-capable, so you can get gmail notifier, google talk, etc. to work.

By: damselfly

damselfly — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:49:28 +0000

You name it, I was probably looking for it! I'm pretty good for the moment, am slowly learning a few terminal commands that will provide alternatives to the gui programs I was used to using on Windows.

By: Jan Schmidt

Jan Schmidt — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:29:29 +0000

Hmmm. I haven't had any trouble finding all the freeware I want for the Mac. Of course, that might partly be because I do at least half my stuff in a Linux virtual machine under VirtualBox….

What are you looking for?

By: damselfly

damselfly — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:51:45 +0000

Hi Kenneth, long time no speak!

I have looked at OpenOffice, although I've only tested out the Windows distribution so far, not the Mac one. I keep meaning to check it out, for its freeware database, so I do have it in mind.

One thing I didn't like about it on Windows was the slow start-up as it opened the entire suite of programs as opposed to one individual program. That might be more bearable on the Mac, which is 4 years younger than my Windows laptop!

By: Kenneth Rapp

Kenneth Rapp — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:24:55 +0000

Have you looked at Open Office as a Mac alternative to Excel? I know it has a spreadsheet program, and it should support anything portable from Google Docs anyway.