NBR: hey Mac peeps....

MrsMillerTime

I'm ordering my MacBook Pro tonight (squee!  so excited!).  Any recommendations for software and/or accessories that I *must* have?

carlinlp

It comes with everything you need pretty much.  We did buy the MS office suite for word, iLife, Photoshop and Quickbooks.  That's it really.  I do not recommend using iphoto though.  It has some flaws.

flymansWife

running off to see what iLife is....

kiarox2002

I like pages, but I'm not sure if it is compatible with Word or not.  It's very easy to use.  FWIW, DH hates Numbers which is Mac's version of Excel.  

carlinlp

Yeah, there are few things MS does well and Excel is one of them LOL!

flymansWife

flymansWife:

running off to see what iLife is....

lol so i have the iLife package and didn't realize it. lol. clearly i haven't been using those

i still haven't gotten MS Office but another vote for it (holding out hoping my cousin can hook me up with a $20 copy from the university!)

joyco

Lyndsay, what do you recommend over iPhoto?  I use iPhoto and while it's ok, I would love something better (esp. for editing and junk).

 

MMT, you're going to LOVE IT!  If you don't, we can't be friends anymo'.

fjaril

We love aperture it's really easy to use for editing photos.

I have the MS OFFICE from when I was at University and have yet to put it on the current laptop but it's quite nice.

ilife is great too

 

mlf625

WHEEEEEE!

I have nothing other than what came standard on my MacBook and I'm totally content with that.   

MrsMillerTime

joyco:

Lyndsay, what do you recommend over iPhoto?  I use iPhoto and while it's ok, I would love something better (esp. for editing and junk).

I'm no Lyndsay, but I've been using Adobe Lightroom Beta. It's free & super easy to use. I'm wearing it out until I decide to bite the bullet and get Aperture and/or Photoshop.

Kristen&Doyle

Apple care protection plan - I believe it's a 3 year extended waranty

iwork was good enough for me, that's because I never use them though to begin with, only when someone sends me a file!

external hard drive for backups, unless you already have that covered with an online service. 

carlinlp

iphoto has some pretty serious flaws to it.  first, when it catalogs your images, it does so in a way that saves them to you hard drive in multiple places.  total headache and HUGE waste of hard drive space and system utilities.  It also doesn't read color space correctly and automatically changes data within your files.  That is total crap, leave my images alone!  So, Photoshop.  I heard good things about Aperature, but it will never ever ever replace the entity that is PS.  The full versions come with Bridge - which I couldn't live without.  It keeps me organized and sane!

Faon

Ah-I'm jealous! We have the money ready to go (decided to wait on MomMobile for now) and our MacBookPro all picked out, but are in the process of changing banks/accounts, so I have to wait a few more days. At least I get a 15% discount through my brother.

Have fun!

joyco

carlinlp:

iphoto has some pretty serious flaws to it.  first, when it catalogs your images, it does so in a way that saves them to you hard drive in multiple places.  total headache and HUGE waste of hard drive space and system utilities.  It also doesn't read color space correctly and automatically changes data within your files.  That is total crap, leave my images alone!  So, Photoshop.  I heard good things about Aperature, but it will never ever ever replace the entity that is PS.  The full versions come with Bridge - which I couldn't live without.  It keeps me organized and sane!

good lord, you are right about that multiple places crap! I am learning this now b/c I have run out of space on my mac and am deleting stuff only to find that it is still there!!!

kiarox2002

I use Picasa and I love it.  It's super easy to use and I'm pretty sure it was free.  DH mostly uses Picasa, but when he edits photos he uses Adobe.  Honestly, unless you are a professional I wouldn't fork over the money though.  (DH does some graphic design work so he needed the full $600 version.  Bleh.)  It's expensive and, in my opinion, difficult to use.

I second the recommendation for Apple Care.  We don't have it on either of our MacBooks and I wish we did.