New to OSX...a few questions

[asousa]

Hi guys...I am a newbie to Apple products. I got a MAC Mini simply to learn and try to convert myself over. Playing with it last night...I drummed up a few questions I was hoping you could help with.....

1) Is it me...or does the mouse slow itself down automatically and speed up....seems to me like the speed variates. I checked the mouse options but did not see anything. I am used to one constant speed.

2) The font seems to be a little blurry. Everything looks crystal clear except for the smaller fonts on webpages and even in, for example, the url typing area.

3) In the MS world...I used DVD Shrink to back up my DVDs and then NERO to burn them. What programs should I use to do the equivelant operations.

I think that is it for now....any help would be great!! Thanks guys...look forward to this site for all my future info.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Originally Posted by asousa

1) Is it me...or does the mouse slow itself down automatically and speed up....seems to me like the speed variates. I checked the mouse options but did not see anything. I am used to one constant speed.

Yep, "mouse acceleration" is always on in OS X, as far as I know. You may be interested in a program called "USBOverdrive" which provides a lot of tweaking for mice/joysticks/gamepads -- it's available from versiontracker.com

2) The font seems to be a little blurry. Everything looks crystal clear except for the smaller fonts on webpages and even in, for example, the url typing area.

Yep, that's font-smoothing for ya. You can turn this off in Safari's preferences, or system-wide in the Accessibility pane of the System Preferences.

3) In the MS world...I used DVD Shrink to back up my DVDs and then NERO to burn them. What programs should I use to do the equivelant operations.

DVD2One will shrink a DVD, and then you can burn it with Roxio Toast.

Roxio's Popcorn will also shrink and burn all in one package.

[fryke]

For 3) I suggest FastDVDCopy. It's the best of the crowd, I think.

[adambyte]

For 3. I suggest "Handbrake." It's simple and makes high-quality MP4s.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Originally Posted by adambyte

For 3. I suggest "Handbrake." It's simple and makes high-quality MP4s.

Using Handbrake to create an MP4/AVI, and shinking a DVD folder full of VOB files to burn onto a DVD-R disk to view in a set-top DVD player are two completely different things.

If you want to shrink a DVD and then burn it onto a recordable DVD disk to view in a set-top DVD player, Handbrake will get you nowhere.

[asousa]

how do you shut the font smoothing off? I see turning it to best match a display.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Right there below where you're looking, in the "Appearance" pane of the System Preferences:

"Turn off text smoothing for font sizes (xxx) and smaller."

It only works for 12 pt. type and smaller, but if you like looking at 14 pt. UNsmoothed type, it may be time to get your eyes checked...

[Mikuro]

You may want to play around with the various smoothing styles. Personally, I find "light" to be the nicest on my LCD.

Keep in mind, though, that changes you make to this setting will only take effect on applications that are launched after the change. So to see it take full effect, log out and back in after you make a change. For the purpose of testing the different styles, I like to simply quit + reload Safari after I make each change.

I also find smaller fonts a little hard to read, too (no matter how they're smoothed). That's why I have Safari's minimum font size set to 15. You might want to use that setting, which is in the Advanced section of Safari's preferences.