Potential OS 10.3 User In Training

First of all, i apologize if this is in the wrong forum. Feel free to move it.

My birthday is coming up, and I am going to treat myself to a used G4 iBook possibly. Of course, I dont want to eat all my space w/Tiger, so I will just use Panther until I can get a bigger RAM. Being a windows user since birth, are there any things I should learn? I already have F.A.K. and WB (Fly A Kite and WindowBlinds) on my PC, so I am used to the look. Any tricks I need to know? How fast is 1 GHz? I am a student, and I dont do alot of gaming, mainly web surfing, and Word Processing.

Thank you in advance.

wbw

#439168

The User Interface won't operate as fast as you think it will. There's a lot more being drawn than bitmaps, so, there is a fraction of a second that it will take for the computer to respond to.

Get into the habit of not going to My Computer.

I'm trying to remember everything I found different from when I first switched.

Probably the first thing I would do it put a shortcut (just drag and drop) into your dock for you Home Directory and Applications folder. It will save a lot of headache trying to navigate around all the time.

Most of the time (with exception of Calculator, and a few other programs), when you close the program via red stop light, the program doesn't quit. You will see it in the dock with a black arrow. If you really want to quit the program, you will need to go into the Programs menu, and select Quit, or Apple + Q.

Be careful where you click, click on a background window will automatically switch to that program, becomes more of a pain when you are dealing with programs that have a lot of satellite windows like PhotoShop. They will either appear and get in the way, or disappear.

The secondary keys (Apple, Control and Alt) will be in a completely different positions. I forget the transition, but you will get used to them pretty quick.

That's all I can think of right now.

(Why did you abbreviate Fly-A-Kite and WindowBlinds, then right after put their full names, wouldn't have saved time just to put their full names? )

#439172

In all programs except NeoOffice, and probably a few others:

Apple (Command) + arrow key will move to the beginning or end of the line, depending on which arrow key.

Alt (Option) + arrow key will move to the beginning or end of the word, depending on which arrow key.

Ctrl. isn't used as much.

And add shift to the above two combinations if you want to select the line or word...that is, alt + shift + right arrow will select the word to the immediate right.

-NC

#439191

@ NC - Good catch. It's a shame Home and End aren't used in OS X like they are used in Windows. It's much more efficient, methinks.

Oh, a neat little tip, when you are working in something like Word, Pages, TextMate, or anything where you save, if you look at the red stop light when you've made changes without saving, there will be a little dot (dark red on the default Aqua skin). It's not a must know thing, nor would it take you long to figure out, but it threw me for a loop the first couple times I saw it, and didn't know what it was.

#439317

There is a good reference at Apple.com for differences between XP and OS X called Switch 101. I found it helpful when I finally got my Macbook. Using F.A.K. helped some...at least I wasn't lost.

#439351