New to OSX...a few questions

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asousa

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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.
 
asousa said:
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
 
adambyte said:
For 3. I suggest "Handbrake." It's simple and makes high-quality MP4s.
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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.
 
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... ;)
 
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.
 
I find that 3-step programme mildly amusing. FastDVDCopy does those three in one go. I can really only recommend it over the MTR, DVD2oneX, Toast method.
 
i dont have any blank dvds to test it out, but just use handbrake to convert the dvds into mp4's and burn them in idvd. It might not be an exact copy but it will be good enough. if the mp4's when converted to mp2's which are large you might need dual layer dvd burner but i havnt tried it.
 
The mouse drivers in OS X are really bad compared to the ones in XP. I use either SteerMouse or USBOverdrive to better control the scaling and speed of the cursor.
 
no, it's the other way around. the mouse drivers in windows are oversimplistic, meaning if you need precision, you have to slow the whole mouse down, or if you want speed, then you have to sacrifice any kind of accuracy. macos has a wonderful accelerate action on the mouse.

it takes getting used to, but is the far better system.
 
Lt Major Burns said:
no, it's the other way around. the mouse drivers in windows are oversimplistic, meaning if you need precision, you have to slow the whole mouse down, or if you want speed, then you have to sacrifice any kind of accuracy. macos has a wonderful accelerate action on the mouse.

it takes getting used to, but is the far better system.
Click to expand...

Well, that's your opinion. There are many many people who complain about the mega slow mouse movements in OS X due to non user adjustable scaling.

When I use XP, I can get my mouse just how I like it with the default drivers. I can't in OS X, therefore my opinion would be the opposite of yours. :)
 
Actually, I have to agree with markwm on this one. The fact that I have more control in Windows over how the mouse responds is great for me, and it's something that I miss in OS X. I usually disabled the precision option in Windows XP since it gets annoying after a while...I can control the mouse enough for my needs. I don't even have this option natively in OS X, so I've had to accostum myself to use the mouse in OS X's manner (and even then it makes me click where I don't want it to).

I'm hoping that Apple would give us a little more control over the mouse function in Leopard. Yeah, it's a trivial thing but sometimes the little details make a big difference.
 
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