Father gets a macbook

[az]

My father gets a macbook for his birthday next week. He's not exactly the most computer-savvy person on the planet, though not as bad as my mother. I figure I'll try and have them use OSX, and if it doesn't work out, I can still always install XP.

Any tips, hints? I've never used a mac myself. Any free software worth getting? Any non-free software that's so important it's worth pira paying for?

I think he has one program that only works under windows. Parallels Desktop isn't free, is it? I don't want to have him dual-boot. I did purchase 1 GB RAM (2x512) to upgrade his machine.

[Jessterw]

Parallels isn't free, but I believe it's around $79/US (don't have an Intel-based Mac, so I'm not positive).

As far as free or paid software, that's really going to depend on what he needs. If he needs an IM client that works beyond just one service/protocol, then I would recommend Adium. As an alternative to Safari there is Camino, which is Gecko-based like Firefox but without extensions. For handling archive files (zip, rar, etc.) that goes beyond what's built-in, there is The Unarchiver. Those are all free apps. Adium and Camino both have German localized version, but I'm not sure about The Unarchiver.

Out of all those, Adium is probably the least user-friendly when configuring things if you go beyond the defaults. It has a great 'extras' site if you want to try and alter it to best suite his needs; almost everything is configurable.

If you know of any specific type apps he's going to need or want to use then I'm sure I can find or recommend a specific app. With most new Mac users he's likely going to find out that there's something he wants to do and can't with what he has. Mac software is generally pretty good about filling specific needs in that regard.

[az]

His work domputer uses Windows, so I guess MS office compatibility wouldn't be bad. MS Office isn't exactly cheap, though.

[ZokesPro]

Why not OpenOffice?

[az]

I don't think it exists on macs, and it is not 100% compatible with MS Office.

[Jammrock]

I don't think it exists on macs, and it is not 100% compatible with MS Office.

Mac version:

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.html

Supposedly just as compatible as the Windows version. There's always docs.google.com if you are looking for free solutions, or any other number of free online office suites.

[Jessterw]

It exists in a few different forms, though the two primary ones are the X11-required OpenOffice variant and the almost native NeoOffice one. Compatibility with MS Office isn't 100%, but it's not far off from what each version of MS Office is from the next.

As an alternative - and at this point if one doesn't need Excel - there is Apple's own iWorks suite (Keynote and Pages). Though, for the price of it you could obtain Parallels and find a copy (as in something you have laying around) of Windows and Office to run under it.

There is of course Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but he would have to be running an alternative browser to Safari (not sure why now, it used to work fine).

[az]

The X11 version's website didn't really render reassuringly well in Opera (see attachment)

I might have to get him parallels anyway.