After talking about it for months I have finally switched.

Since 1985 I have been a PC user, building all but my first one. After years of forking $$$$$ for M$ compatible software, then keeping it updated/upgraded and then having to keep the machines running smoothly (not an easy task) I got sick of it all. Though I am keeping my current two monitored PC, which I will network with the Mac, I will let it die a natural death.

Anyway on to the happy occasion. I actually got two machines, one for myself and one for my work girlfriend. Before I tell you what I got, some well earned praise were praise is due. I emailed out three quotes. Two replied, one didn't (Academy) In the end I chose Mac Centre Albion St, Sydney for several reasons; price, location and informational pre sale service (email, phone & face to face) More about their service at the end.

I Bought

1. two iMac 24" 2.4Gb (2Gb RAM & 4Gb RAM)
2. two Wireless mighty mouse
3. two applecare
4. two iWork '08
5. two Lacie Extreme BigDisk 1Tb (triple interface) external drives
6. one Epson Stylus RX690 MFC

Now more about the excellent service from Mac Center.

I sent the quotes out on Tuesday, they replied the same day. I also went and saw them that afternoon for an eye ball check out. Late afternoon that day I emailed them my orders. Late Thursday afternoon I took delivery of everything except the two Lacie external drives which should be in on Monday or Tuesday next week.

In my purchase order email I asked if it would be possible to carry out the following:

1. If Leopard is not already installed please install Leopard and if possible all updates on both machines
2. Install only Australian English languages on both machines
3. Install Epson RX510 drivers on one machine and Epson RX690 drivers on the other only
4. Install the two 2Gb RAM sticks on one machine and install the left over 1Gb RAM stick in the other machine for a total of 2Gb in that machine
5. Install iWorks '08 on both machines
6. Ensure that MS Office Trial is not installed on either machine

All of the above instructions were carried out flawlessly without additional cost. The staff at Mac Center are tops in my book

My next task is to network the iMac with the PC (via modem/router or direct firewire, haven't decided yet the best way to go with this) and shift over My Documents, my photo's and iTunes.

Anyway so far after six hours of playing and installing Firefox and moving over the PC Firefox profile, I still have a learning curve. I have lots of Apple bookmarks and of course I have this great forum. Oh and I have to deliver and set up my work girlfriends machine and RX690 printer. I will be posting a pic of my entire set-up shortly. Just let me get to grip with things first.

Congrats, and I'd recommend using ethernet for your networking.

Well done mate. Good to hear about good service also.

You did your homework though didn't you, a member since Aug 2005 and switched Nov 2007....nothing like being cautious

Like anything , it pays to do your homework MacRam which he has obviously done.
Congrats on your new purchases and also good to see an Apple reseller getting a plug for good service.

Stewie

Congratulations and welcome to the world of Mac. Stick with Firefox if it's comfortable, but I would recommend slowly switching to Safari, it's a better browser in my opinion.

If you have any problems or need help, just ask here, you know where all keen to help where we can.

Finally! Congrats mate! I know how excited about this you have been...your gonna love it

Welcome mate just changed over from pc to Mac three months ago and I'm rapt.

Sheeeet! You don't muck about and do things by halves do you??

Congrats and welcome to the wonderful world of macs and a new beginning...

Well I have spent all day trying to network the iMac with the PC via the Belkin modem/router. After lots googling I still could not get it to work-gave up.

Did manage to bring across my iTunes library via iTunes backup disk and copying across the Library.itl file. Now I have to bring across my non standard album artwork (only a small number)

Managed to import my Thunerbird address book and my 3rd party main address book (sort of) using a program called "Address Book Importer" but lots of duplicates and it reset all the dates to the 1st Jan 2007. Oh well nothings perfect.

Now just have to set up all my mail boxes and just forward the important saved PC Thunderbird ones. Then selectively bring across the stuff I want from PC My Docs and My Media via DVD data disk. It was all due for a good spring clean.

I will soldier on

to network a pc i have here with my MacBook Pro running Leopard i just made a shared folder on the windows xp machine. then when i open finder and choose the pc from the Shared list it automatically finds the shared folder for me and i dump whatever i need to in there

all done via Airport Express
can't complain about it at all. very easy to set up too

That's damn good service. Also a damn good purchase. Massive envy here.

On behalf of Mac Centre
Thank you very much for the nice comments FineWine.
I hope you enjoy your new mac.
Should you have any problems feel free to call up and we would be more then happy to help.
Regards
Sylvester

The trouble is that it is not showing up in Finder even though I have created the Shared folder. Neither machine responds to pings in either direction using the modem/router assigned addresses.

So I am now just using DVD's data disks.

Ahh, you've rodgered something while setting up

All machines can browse the 'net, then? And they're all set to DHCP? If it was just XP not responding to pings, I'd say there's the problem - and that you need to disable the firewall etc.

It sounds like there might be a setting in your router, perhaps for a VLAN or to isolate all the clients from each other. They're all plugged into the same router, aren't they?

Lastly, all machines are on the same subnet etc?

If you really want to get to the bottom of it, open Terminal.app (on both the macs) and type ifconfig, then paste the results in here. On the XP machine, click Start, Click Run, Type cmd and then type ipconfig, then paste those results in here too. That'll let the nerdiest among us know what's up.

I reckon you can also start a new thread about importing your thunderbird emails and contacts, and do it again properly - the thunderbird data stuff should be cross platform..

Jeremy

Edit :

Try this. In Finder, kit Apple+K and then type in :

smb://192.168.1.2

where 192.168.1.2 is the IP address of the PC...

That should show you if there are any windows shares available from that machine. You will probably need to authenticate with a user/pass from the PC, or just use Administrator/(blank).

Another switcher! woowoo!! There seem to be more and more these days, which is great!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Mac!

Ohh and do you have a work girlfriend and a home one or something??? Just that you call her your WORK girlfriend. hehehehehe