Please help a PC user....

C

cbmeeks

Registered
Ok, I have been a long fan of the Mac. But, I am a computer programmer for an insurance company which forces me to use XP.

Anyway, a friend of mine is letting me borrow a spare Mac he has. It's a dual 1Ghz, OSX 10.1.5, 1G ram. I get to keep it for a YEAR!! I am going to try to create some programs for him for his other employees.

Anyway, I need some help on dropping/converting some PC habbits to this Mac.

1) On the PC, if I have a text field and I want to delete everything from my cursor to the END of the line, I would hold down "SHIFT->End" and it would select everything from the cursor to the end of the line. How do I do that on the Mac? In other words, how do I jump to the end of a line. Oh, I am using a Belkin standard (Windows) USB keyboard...not an Apple keyboard.

2) Why do sometimes simple commands take like 40 seconds or more? For example, I can be going through the system preferences just fine. But, I will click on the Users section and it will say "Loading" for like a solid minute. What gives? It doesnt do it all the time...just sometimes.

3) This is more of a general issue...not just Mac but it seems to happen more with a Mac. I have a USB optical mouse on every computer I use (PC's, Mac, laptops, etc). I don't use a mouse pad. When I move the mouse funny...like in an angel...the cursor jumps all over the place. It happens in Windows too. Any clues? Should I get a good mouse pad?

THANKS!!

cbmeeks
 
Wow, thats a pretty impressive machine to have on loan.

1) Its the same in some programs, such as MS Office. Other programs however will use Apple-Right and Apple-Left instead of the End and Home keys respectively.

2) Often this is due to a permissions or caching issue. I'd suggest using the disk utility to repair permissions (You'll find it under Applications --> Utilities) and then clear the System Preferences items from your [home]/Library/Caches folder.

3) An optical mouse has to track visual cues on the surface it is on in order to function. They never work well on shiny surfaces, and even on quite smooth surfaces you are best off looking for something with a bit of texture and colour.

That said, I hate mouse pads. They're never big enough or stable/heavy enough. Instead, I prefer to cut a length of textured rubberoleum to run along the complete surface of my desk. It works fantastically.
 
Thanks!

I will try those and the apple-right/shift works.

But what sucks is that I have to press the "Windows" key when I need to press Apple...yuck

lol

cb
 
So, this is your first mac?

Well, take note, that most commands like Control and C on Windows, are Apple and C on mac.

So, to copy text/etc on a mac, press Apple + C. Apple + V to paste, and so on. Not so bad.
 
No, this actually isn't my first Mac.

In fact, the guy that is loaning it to me uses me for his Mac tech support! lol
Don't laugh, I am a networking admin/programmer and I have been able to figure out some really difficult stuff on the Mac but sometimes the simple stuff eludes me. :)

This is the first OSX Mac I have kept for longer than one day. My first Mac was a Quadra 700. I currently own two Mac SE's (hehehe) and I used to have a Quadra 900 with OS8.0.
 
Cmd+Right and Cmd+Left do the whole line as stated earlier (assuming you're not using a Microsoft product), but there are other cool things too; Opt+Right and Opt+Left allow you to pace forward or back a single word. Cmd+Up goes to the beginning of the document and Cmd+Down goes to the end.

After using Windows as my primary OS for two years, I started to really like using Word because it used all the Windows keyboard shortcuts (like home and end). Now, programs that DON'T obey the Mac way of doing things frustrate me to hell.

Another good key combo is just pressing up and down in a single-line text input field (like a URL box for example). That's one that you find yourself trying to use when you start using Windows machines every now and again and you find that you've only moved one character across.

All these combos can be combined with the Shift key to make selections (except in Safari, where Cmd+Shift+Left and right move between the tabs).
 
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