new mac

[johnny]

im new here, and i am also new to macs. (i made the switch yesterday) i had a pretty good kowledge of windows computersand so now i have no idea wat im doing. so, heres what i have:

imac g5
17" screen
1.8gHz
512mb ram
80gb hard drive
OS X Panther

so heres my questions:

1. i have a dsl connection and i prefer to leave te connection going but about every half hour a window pops up that reminds me that my connection is still active and asks if i want to disconnet. I would like to know if and how i might be able to make it stop doing that.

2. i had lots of files on my old pc that i need to move onto this computer. i tried burning them onto cd-rs as .rar files but the extracting tool didn't work. now i have an ethernet cable running between the two computers and i would like to set up a network or somwthing similar that i would be ale to just move the files across to but this whole mac thing is new to me so if anyone could hel with that it would be greatly appreciated.

[DerekH]

Welcome to Webmasterworld Johnny

Your first question...
Go to System Preferences (the light switch) and select Network.

Press PPP Options and there you can uncheck the 30-minute warning.

As for moving files, well, either use the built in Help - search for Windows - or get onto the Apple Website and look in the Support Area.

I've not moved files between PC and Mac myself, but recently, two of my friends joined machines and said it was really easy.
I recall that they set up an account on the Mac, turned on Windows File Sharing (see File Sharing in the Light Switch), and it was easy to get the PC to log into the Mac and use Drag and Drop.
There's also some pages in the Help if you type Windows as your question.

Enjoy the Mac - it will soon all become second nature and there are some really nice features, like colour file icons so you can group them and search for them.
And loads more!
DerekH

[johnny]

yeah i figured out that first part on my own. (im kinda getting good at this) as for the transferring files, im thinking about just using cd-r's, but i guess ill just wait and see if anyone else replys.

[DerekH]

CDRs is fine - Mac will read Mac and/or PC formats.

But an Ethernet connection really is worth trying. Depending on your Ethernet cards, you may need a crossover cable (some cards can recognise the presence of the wrong cabling and reconfigure, but some can't).

Do have a check on getting the Mac to log in to the PC or vice versa - I know that the Apple website 'support' tab has oodles of info - because you can do a lot more with drag-and-drop than trying to put files onto CD. Not least is the ability to copy everything and walk away and leave it to get on with it.

By the way - if you move files from one place to another on the same hard drive on a Mac, it never actually copies and deletes the file, unlike a PC, so you can move files around to your heart's content, even when the disk is full!

Moving to Mac from PC is easier than the other way round, because the Mac only has two "illegal" characters in filenames ":" and "/", whereas the PC has more.

Welcome to Apple land!
DerekH

[johnny]

ive been reading alot of the tutorials but its hard becasue alot of it i dont understand. i mean i know a lot about computers but ftp/filesharing/netowrks wasn't one of the things i knew a lot about.

[whoisgregg]

If I only had a gig or so of data on the old machine, I'd just burn a couple CD-R's rather than figure out Windows file sharing.

Here's an idea, though. On the mac, go to System Preferences > Sharing > Services and turn on "Windows Sharing"

Your mac should show up as a server on your PC and you can drag and drop files to it. (The files would have to go in the Drop Box which is in your User's Public Folder.)

[Voyageur]

With a www.mac.com account, I believe, you can download iDisk software for both Macs and PCs in order to access your iDisk file from both computers. In this way, you can easily move even large files from your PC to your Mac. After you're done, you can continue to use iDisk to back up your work.

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't done this.

[johnny]

i bought that option with the computer, but im pretty sure its internet storage so ill have to upload it all, and im pretty sure i have at least 2 gigs worth of stuff to move...

[johnny]

well the .mac thing only has 125 mb of storage so ill going to end up using cd-r's which wont be a problem. i very satisfied so far with my mac so far the only this is this:

i finally got around to installing my printer tody and while it works perfectly fine, whenever i print 2 applescript windows open and when i close it another one will pop up. if i try to quit the program it will just open back up again with two more apple script wondows. is there anything ican do about this?