switching to Apple?

[C-Chan]

Awesome.  ^__^
Actually, normally I would still encourage you to try Ubuntu anyway, since it's designed to be very merciful to new users.  Unlike SUSE Linux, Xubuntu essentially installed everything for me, and had all my hardware working fine right off the bat (where's with SUSE, I had to wrestle to get my sound card and Plug-in-Play to work properly.  Not to mention that VLC (FTW!!!) works best on Linux.... ^__~

But this is a laptop after all, and though Ubuntu is free you still need to go through the extra expense of finding a modern, small, lightweight laptop (cause even used clunky laptops are expensive).  In that case, you might as well stick with Macs just because the hardware is generally of better quality and is quite elegant.

(And you can still install Ubuntu on it anyway -- given the option of having Linux, Mac and [possibly] Windows tri-bootable, that'd make you invincible....! ^v^)

[Xyanide]

Yeah that's true, it's not always just the design like people say, the internal hardware is very decent judging from the work I did on them

and yeah for avarage household computer use Ubuntu is a nice choice, you can do all your things on it without too much of a hassle, for windows emulation there's always Wine for basic programs like winamp or a torrent client

[Kami-Tux]

xmms/audacious is very similar to WinAmp and for torrents there are countless native ones. But yeah, Ubuntu-tan surely is a good friend for anything you want to do at your PC.

[NejinOniwa]

I agree. My cousin runs Ubuntu on his comp, and even though he does have a larger XP partition he hardly uses it at all as Ubuntu simply is ways better. I've been thinking of doing the same, and i probably will create a partition for Ubuntu when i get myself a new, bigass hard drive to store stuff on. I can't survive with just 160 gigs, that's just way off my personal system requirement ;003

And for the FTP client there's lots of stuff you can use, but I'm not very into that since i mainly use my sweet DC-tan for almost everything. It can get you almost anything, it gives off kickass speed provided you're on a good line, and there's clients for every platform i know of.

[Nidas]

I agree. My cousin runs Ubuntu on his comp, and even though he does have a larger XP partition he hardly uses it at all as Ubuntu simply is ways better. I've been thinking of doing the same, and i probably will create a partition for Ubuntu when i get myself a new, bigass hard drive to store stuff on. I can't survive with just 160 gigs, that's just way off my personal system requirement ;003

see, thats part of the problem; the HD on a laptop suddenly looks a whole lot smaller when its partitioned between two OSs and I don't really want to make a straight jump to Linux :p Like I said earlier, Linux is very much a longer term idea at the moment.

Other thing I forgot to ask about Apple was torrent clients; had a look around, read this which recommends Transmission. Anyone got anything to add on torrent clients? I currently use uTorrent on Windows btw

[NejinOniwa]

Don't the newer laptops include quite bigass harddrives though?

[C-Chan]

Quite big.  ^__^
Makes me feel kinda small, since I actually have my Xubuntu Linux running in an old machine with an 8GB hard drive.  You'd think that've been the death of it, but Xubuntu really knows how to stretch old hardware.  ^v^

Everyone else who doesn't use uTorrent likes the cross-platform Azureus.  But because it runs on Java, I'm not terribly fond of it (prefer something nice and simple like BitTornado).

Did I forget to mention, btw, that you can also run Linux without having to partition your hard drive?  Many come as Live CDs (such as Xubuntu and Knoppix), while others are small enough to allow the whole OS to operate from a USB flash drive.  (e.g, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux).

Just something to keep in mind in case you ever get tired of loving your Mac laptop too much.... ^___^

[Xyanide]

gah don't use bittornado it doesn't work that well
i've been using Ã,µtorrent lately and damn it's great, a lot less CPU and RAM hogging than azureus, not that my system can't handle it while i'm running msn, winamp, firefox and the like all at the same time but i don't mind my torrents downloading while i'm playing a recourse demanding game

I can really recommend it, at this moment it is only using 7MB of my RAM

and that's practically nothing compared to clients like bitcoment or azureus, hell it's even practically nothing compared to multi-tabbed firefox! at the moment i've got 5 tabs open, firefox uses 70MB lol

[NejinOniwa]

Hah, true true...my firefox is currently hogging around 180 megs o' ram. Wicked sick. All these image tabs...

[C-Chan]

gah don't use bittornado it doesn't work that well

Hell no I wouldn't tell him to use BitTornado, I just said I used it myself due to the limitations of the 7 year-old machine I rescued.  -v-

BitTornado is also easy on the RAM and is the only torrent client on that poor old machine that gives me reliable leeching/seeding and blazing 3-digit speeds.  The problem is that it's way too ugly to put on Mac OSX, and I fear it'd only crack the screen of Nidas' future Mac laptop.  ^^'

Like everything in this world, there are always ways to run programs that weren't designed for your particular system.  There's definitely a few ways to get uTorrent to run on Mac OSX, as described here:

http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-run-utorrent-in-osx/

Fortunately, until a Mac (or for that matter a Linux) version of uTorrent becomes available (or an open source alternative that's exactly like it), there's still other options to explore in addition to Transmission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_software

[Nidas]

*cough* BUMP *cough*

so yeah... I am now on Apple :p Pretty good so far, but anyone got a recommendation for a compatible music player? I'm really not a fan of iTunes and can't really be bothered to go through the hassle of setting up Winamp right now =/ oh and any other general software you think I should pick up would be great too :p

Using Transmission for torrent btw, seems pretty good, not as good as uTorrent, but it'll do

[Tsubashi]

Congratulations! I'm glad you decided  on the Mac!

Hmm, music players...
Like I've said before, I typically use iTunes, but Cog isn't bad. There's also RealPlayer, though personally I don't like it.

As for other software, if you're into IMing and such, I definitely recommend GAIM. Very compatible, stable and usable.
There's also some nifty Freeware here

Hope that helps!

[C-Chan]

Woohoo!!!!!!!  Nidas took the plunge after all!  ^v^

I myself am now 90% on Linux (Kubuntu), with the remaining 10% divided between XPMCE and eComStation.  ^___^

Too bad Amarok won't play on OSX (or at least not natively), cause it's a magnficent audio player.  ^v^
Would probably still recommend Cog myself, since it's open source.  ^.^
(And VLC player for everything else,... there's nothing that thing can't play.... ^v^)

I thought nothing could beat uTorrent until I tried out the more recent versions of kTorrent (which btw, was around way BEFORE uTorrent).  Suffice to say, I now have confidence in the future of open source torrent downloaders.  ^____^

(Azureus would probably be great too if only they got rid of that damn Java.... X__X)

[Bella]

Congrats on the new Apple ;010 I like Macs, I may get one someday.

[C-Chan]

Sooner if it's a Tablet Mac, of course.  ^__^
Myself included.... ^.^