Hi all

I am about to take delivery of my first ever MAC, having been an IBM guy since 1969. I am not a techo but am an experienced Windows user

Can you recommend any readily available computer based training programs to get me up and running quickly. I am looking for two different flavours which may even require two different programs.

1. To get me using fairly full functioin of OS X

2. To get my wife using the system primarily for email and web. She has NEVER been a PC user but has the disadvantage of having watched my experienced incompetence for decades.

I can't wait to get my new system but am a bit nervous about how long it will take to "unlearn" my years of OS/2 and Windows.

Wybalena

Hi Wybalena,

The best thing I did when I first switched was to pick up a copy of David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual

Once I got through that I ended up buying a couple of other books in the Missing Manual series. What ones are right for you will depend on your interests, but the books on the iLife apps, like iPhoto, are really worthwhile.

I'm not too sure of any decent computer-based training packages, but you can find some video tutorials on Mac OS X and apps that run on it at ScreenCastsOnline. There is even a series of tutorials aimed at switcher here.

Other than that, if you decide to spring for .Mac, there are a heap of training materials in its learning centre. These are a combination of text based and video tutorials.

I agree with the .Mac learning centre, it's full of useful videos and documents that help you use your Mac. Being made by Apple, they're very clean and easy to watch and read too.

HawkeR's training:

HawkeR's training consists of one rule and one rule only with a few parts.

Rule One: Play with your mac, work it out yourself, check google if you want to know something specific, or post here

Have a look at the For Dummies books. I've used them to successfully get me started with the Terminal (12 years ago, using UNIX for Dummies) and Adobe Indesign.

You can try apple's own. Check out their website. I found it to be fairly good.

Also there are TAFE short courses you can try but I found they are too basic for the beginers course.