I am thinking of getting a Mac book, how easy is it to transfer documents between a Mac and a windows PC, ie got one at work and cannot change it. Just talking about usual stuff such as word doc's and email's etc.
Thanks for your help
Very easy, they use the same file formats.
All MS stuff is the same. Other stuff seems to go across easy enough, even mix'n'match on a network seems to work fine. Only sticky bit is transferring calander appointments and address book stuff, but not too much hassle
Zero hassle.
Since switching to macs 5 years or so ago I've still not found something I could do on a windows box but not on my mac. Plenty examples the other way round though...
So taking a word document done on microsoft home on a memory stick and open it and edit and take it back the next day?
Sorry for being stupid!!!
Yes, it will work. There are few file choices to save as well for better optimization.
Macs won't natively write to NTFS formatted drives is about the only limitation.
You'll need a copy of office though:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx
(but then you would for a pc too)
Free alternatives also exist (neo-office - mac native port of openoffice)
Vinny, google NTFS-3g and macfuse. It'll give you read-write NTFS support.
Only thing I have found a pain using both mac and pc is that you can't get publisher for Mac. Otherwise everything else is compatable.
of course you could just run windows on your mac as well as osx- but you'd need to have a copy of windows as well, obviously.
My colleagues all use PCs and I use macs. Get the versions of Office lined up and there will be little pain. Stupid things like forgetting to explcitely add .doc, xls extensions etc. can cause problems for less intelligent colleagues, but on the whole there are few problems.
I run a copy of VM Ware when I need to run windows apps such as VISIO, MemoryMap and MS Project.
Only thing I have found a pain using both mac and pc is that you can't get publisher for Mac. Otherwise everything else is compatable.
Most Mac owners would be too embarrassed to use Publisher. Get yourself InDesign 🙂