I’ve been motivated to write this blog article as I’ve helped a number of people who have switched to Mac in the past 12 months (and more than a few who’ve gotten iPhones).

When you switch to the Mac, particularly if you are still working in a MS Windows centric office environment, you are in for a period of readjustment as you get used to your new OS and start to slip the chains of Microsoft and their way of working.

There are two levels of slipping the chain, the first is the lowest risk but the least change, that is, you can simply keep running Windows and your native Windows applications.

You can do this with a product like VMWare Fusion . You’ll need your original Windows software, but you can run your Windows Office apps within your OS X environment pretty seamlessly.

The bad news is that I think if you want to be truly productive in a Windows centric office environment, then you probably need to stop here and stick with Windows. I think its fare to say that most of the Windows compatibility aspects of OS X software are good enough for casual work but start to struggle when things get complex.

Now I’ve definitely tried to go all Mac, I own iWork 08 and I truly have tried to use it to open and work with MS Office documents - but I think it’s fair to say that it doesn’t cope well with complex Word templates or Excel spreadsheets like that 150 page RFP document or that complex Excel statistical worksheet.

The obvious alternative is the Mac version of MS Office. It’s much better with compatibility (excluding VBA) - but still has its own flaws, particularly in the area of reliability and performance. It saddens me that MS Word under Windows under VMWare under OS runs faster and more reliably that MS Office on the Mac!

It’s not a total loss, I use it day by day and it does work well most of the time, but it definitely could be improved.

Now, if you really want to make the jump and go entire Mac native, then you can do that too, and the good news is that if you avoid the need to stay compatible with your Windows based colleagues you have some excellent choices available to you.

1. MS Office Replacement iWork 08

2. Visio Replacement - OmniGraffle ($99 to $199)

This is the closest thing to Visio on the Mac, its quite a good application and will let you work with Visio diagrams. Its commercial, but like most Mac software, reasonably priced.  

1. MS Project replacement - Merlin ($225)

This replaced MS Project, again its commercial, but compared to the…. um….. crap that is MS Project, I found it much more usable and logical. Again, its reasonably priced

1. MS OneNote replacement Evernote (Free!)

This is available on Windows and Mac (And iPhone), for note taking and screenshots its great for keeping things in Sync across your devices. The ‘Save PDF to Evernote’ feature that it makes available on the Mac is good for sending those travel booking receipts to your iPhone.

1. Single Sign-on 1Password ($29.95)

With 1Password you can actually do what you should have been doing all along - keep your passwords complexly long and unguessable and different from site to site, 1Password makes this a breeze

1. What came with your Mac.

Perhaps, like me, years of bundled crap on your Windows Machine has biased you against installed software, but the Mac stuff is ‘All Stuff, No Fluff’.

Here are the highlights:

iCal, particularly combined with MobileMe and an iPhone is great for appointments.

Address Book, spend some time keeping it organized and up to date. With an iPhone it will work with iPhone Maps, Mail, SMSing, and of course making calls. You can also do funky things like organize people into groups in your Address Book and then set up mail filters to organize your mail filing according to groups. Combined with Mobile Me you get it to and from your iPhone

Mail, you should look into smart folders to change the way you read mail - I have made Smart folders my primary way of reading my email as it arrives and have put the actual mailboxes further down the control

So Darcy, our 22 month old is continuing his obsession with written word.

With a few simple lessions he has picked us a good part of the alphabet and takes great pleasure on pointing out what he knows.

In light of that our recent rediscovery of a DVD given to us by some friends a few years back was initially a great thing.

The DVD in question is “Here comes the abc’s” by They Might Be Giants.

Darcy loves it in a kind of Beatle mania like manner, yelling in excitement at it’s start, losing himself in the music and crying at it’s conclusion (or even if mum or dad take longer than he expects to get it running).

Sadly for Darcy the disk is actually quite scratched. Luckly for him his parents know how to use amazon.com and have already ordered a replacement.

Let’s hope the new copy gets here before he gets bored of seeing the first 15 minutes over and over again.

• Heard on the train: “when your friend loses their job it’s a recession, when you lose your job it’s a depression”. #

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When I switched to my Mac nearly 2 years ago, one of the pieces of software I bought was VisualHub from Techspansion. For the princely sum of $23.00 you got a very simple, but very powerful video conversion utility which provided a utility to convert basically any video format to any other format.

Sadly, whilst revisiting the site to pass the details on to my brother, I’ve found that it has decided to shut its doors for ‘personal reasons’.

It’s a pity, and I thought that the author might have sold it off or perhaps even open sourced it, but it looks like instead its just going to disappear - which is a terrible pity given the software’s utility and the lack of other options.

Oh well, hopefully he’ll have a change of mind, or someone else will step in and make things better, in the meantime, I suspect the software will find a robust life in the file sharing world.

Wow.

So, it appears, for about 3 months a small horde of somethings have been trying to log on via SSH to my virtual host.

They’ve all failed (I forbid password logons and use key based authentication) but still - its filled my disk up with failed login attempts.

So in the end I moved SSH to another, more obscure port. Hopefully that’ll keep them from bothering me again.

So, I’ve been reading the huffington post for the past while and using it as my window into the U.S. Elections.

I realize it’s about as balanced as Fox news, albeit from the other side of the fence.

But just lately I’ve added it to my rss feed so I’m getting a lot more content and this reading it a lot more

And boy is it getting on my wick.

50% of the content is ’sky is falling’, ‘what Obama is doing wrong’ stories. The other 50% is ‘mccain ate my hamster’, ‘why McCain is evil’ stuff.

I think I’m going to move on. Politico seems a little more reasoned.

Putting aside the tragedy of this poor woman How is this for a job:

In his opening address Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the jury that female police cadets weighing close to Ms Byrne’s 57 kilograms had been thrown into swimming pools by male police colleagues of various strengths so that scientists could determine what type of throw could have resulted in Ms Byrne’s body landing head first almost 12 metres out from the cliff base.

To: michelecofak@hotmail.com Start Time: 4:07:36 PM; End Time: 4:14:24 PM

Michele says: (4:07:37 PM)

Hi

Steven H says: (4:07:54 PM)

who are you?

Michele says: (4:08:00 PM)

hey, A/S/L?:)

Steven H says: (4:08:09 PM)

who are you?

Michele says: (4:08:22 PM)

hey whats up babe, U got a webcam? finally someone adds me, I am soo fuckin horny today for some reason lol

Steven H says: (4:08:38 PM)

you are a bot aren’t you.

Steven H says: (4:08:44 PM)

mary had a little lamb

Steven H says: (4:08:49 PM)

its fleece was white as snow

Michele says: (4:08:58 PM)

listen hun, I am just about to start my webcam show with jen, come chat me there in my chat room? We can cyber, I will get naked if u do..lol!

Steven H says: (4:09:14 PM)

Do you like astrophsyics?

Michele says: (4:09:32 PM)

I can show u how to watch if u promise not to tell anyone else how to do it???PLEASE:-$

Steven H says: (4:09:51 PM)

I have a large kipper.

Michele says: (4:10:42 PM)

well since its the law that u gotta be 18 (nudity involved), u have to sign up with a credit card for age verification! BUT.. Once you are inside, just clikc on “Webcams” let me know what name you use to sign in with so I know it is you babe! http://DELETED/ fill out the bottom of the page then fill out the next page as well and u can see me live!

Steven H says: (4:10:51 PM)

Chicken is a nice snack.

Michele says: (4:11:12 PM)

Please dont mention anything about that in the chatroom once u get in ok?:-$

Steven H says: (4:11:26 PM)

you don’t want me to discuss chicken?

Michele says: (4:11:51 PM)

OH SHIT.. k I am late to start my show, I gotta get off msn…I will see ya inside my chatroom babe.. remember not to mention that I am upgrading u… You can use your msn name to sign in so i know it is you..

Steven H says: (4:11:53 PM)

This is fun. Potatoes are very starchy.

Michele says: (4:11:53 PM)

AUTO-RESPONSE: hey just in the middle of my webcam show if you want to watch click the link http://DELETED/

Steven H says: (4:12:11 PM)

You didn’t listen to word I said.

Steven H says: (4:12:15 PM)

sob

Steven H says: (4:12:18 PM)

I feel used.

Steven H says: (4:12:29 PM)

Don’t you want to talk about chicken?

Steven H says: (4:12:44 PM)

Hey, I think I might write a bot that spams this address constantly.

Steven H says: (4:13:25 PM)

I tell you what, here is a message for any human that might read this.

Steven H says: (4:14:07 PM)

This is your future: http://dailymail.com/News/NationandWorld/200807250170

Steven H says: (4:14:11 PM)

Good bye!

Our youngest dog, Paris passed away today unexpectedly.

Hi Peewee. Hope you are wagging somewhere nice now.