Switching Sides
- Article 16 of 16
- Macworld, October 2009
With Snow Leopard on the loose it seems like a good time for PC users to make the leap to the Mac. We've got the know-how to help you make that switch
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If you want to keep your PC, and you have a network at home – which you will do if you have so much as a wireless router from your internet service provider – you can turn on Windows file sharing on your PC and your Mac will be able to see any directories you share. Alternatively, you can turn on File sharing on your Mac in the Sharing System Preferences pane, and your PC should be able to see the Mac on the network. It’s not foolproof, however, and can require technical knowledge so isn’t recommended unless you’re prepared to put some time in.
If you want to run Windows applications on your Mac, even that is possible – if you install Windows. The Mac has something called Boot Camp hidden in its Utilities folder in the Applications folder, which allows you to split your Mac’s hard drive in two and install Windows on one half. You can then choose whether to start up your Mac in Windows or OS X by holding down the Alt key at start up and picking from a list. With Snow Leopard, you can also now view the OS X half of your hard drive in Windows so you can transfer files between the two.
The downside is that you’ll need your Windows installer disk – at least Windows XP SP2 – and a valid licence, and you’ll need to reinstall all your applications in the new Windows. You’ll still need to copy your files across as well.
So perhaps the easiest solution to your migration difficulties is Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac edition ( HYPERLINK "http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/stm/" http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/stm/). This costs £75 but it allows you to copy everything on your PC over to your Mac and then run Windows alongside all OS X and all your Mac applications. It comes with a set of tutorials for novice Mac users coming from the Windows world to explain how their new world works. You simply install a piece of software on your PC, install Parallels on your Mac and then connect the two computers together with a USB cable. Parallels will then copy over your PC’s entire disk and create a working version of Windows complete with all your files that you can run on your Mac. Parallels also installs some tools into this copy of Windows that integrates it with your Mac, so that you have access to your Start menu from the OS X Dock, can run Windows applications without the desktop, put all your system tray icons in the taskbar, and copy and paste between Windows and Mac applications. Best of all, it also allows you to drag and drop files between Windows and Mac, let Windows access your Mac’s files and folders, and lets you mount your Windows disk on the desktop so you can copy files from it.
Setting up your Mac once it arrives is very simple. You barely need to do anything at all, beyond connecting everything then turning it on and picking a wireless network if you’re using one. If you have peripherals that you used to use with your PC, you should be able to use most of them on your Mac as well. Anything that requires a parallel port will be a problem, but since your Mac will have both USB 2.0 ports and FireWire ports, you should be able to connect more or less anything to it. If your Mac has a FireWire 800 port, you can get a small, cheap adaptor that will allow you to connect an iLink/IEEE1394/FireWire 400 peripheral, such as a camcorder.
Connecting a peripheral and getting it working are two different things, however. These days, most peripheral manufacturers provide software for both Macs and Windows and often the fact the Apple uses industry standards means that no Mac-specific software is needed anyway. Macs also come with a large number of drivers installed as well. In other words,
In some cases, drivers will be needed all the same. Macs ship with huge numbers of print drivers which means most printers will work without any effort on your part: you just need to go to System Preferences>Print & Fax, click on the + symbol at the bottom of the printer list on the list and your Mac should automatically detect the printer and give you options for installation. If it doesn’t have built-in drivers, Snow Leopard will automatically go on the Internet and download them.
Standalone scanners are less well catered for, although Epson scanners work well with OS X’s Image Capture software. But with the move to all-in-one printer/scanners by printer manufacturers, there’s usually software for Macs as well as PCs available. In some cases, such as HP’s, the Mac software is actually better and easier to use than the PC software.
External hard drives, provided they haven’t been NTFS-formatted, should work perfectly with your Mac; if they have, you’ll need to reformat them using Disk Utility As well as not suffering from the same security problems as Windows, Macs also require less system maintenance. There’s no need for a disk defragger as your Mac defrags files on the fly. There’s no registry to corrupt, no need for a software uninstaller and the few bits of maintenance that need to be done, the Mac does itself at night.
in your Utilities folder to HFS+ or else you won’t be able to write any data to them. If you haven’t got an external hard drive, it’s actually well worth getting one to ensure you have a backup of all your data in case disaster strikes. At less than £80 for a 1TB hard drive, that should back up your Mac’s hard drive several times over. With Snow Leopard’s Time Machine feature, all you need to do is plug in an external drive and you’ll be able to use it for backing up without any configuration needed.
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