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I don't know the percentage of schools that use Macs here, but I would guess that it's pretty small.  The obvious compatibility issues would happen; that is, you wouldn't be able to take a disk of your Mac work and transfer it to the school's computers.  You'd have to rely on emailing it to your school's account.  I'm sure you'll have plenty of access to school computers anyway, so rely on them to do your work when you are in school, rather than bringing your own computer there.

Glenski wrote on Apr 24^th, 2006, 12:50am:

Why wouldn't you be able to do that? Mac and Windows disks are perfectly compatible. You should use a flash drive since it's much easier than floppies or CDs for your files.

The only problem will be with software compatibility, but a lot of programs, such as wordprocessing programs, have a high level of compatibility. You can save your Mac files in a format compatible with Microsoft Word, for example, and open it directly in MS Word on a Windows computer. In fact, MS Word and a lot of other MS programs are available on the Mac.

Yes, there will be compatibility issues, but it's certainly doable. And of course the schools will have their own computers that you can use there, as Glenski says, but you can work on stuff at home on your Mac and bring files in to school.

A flash drive (2.0 USB) is like a little 2-inch stick that can be inserted into Windows or Macs with usb ports, but the software used would still be either Mac or pc. A little stick is handy to carry around (weightless and can hold gigabytes of info). I have a 2 giga, a 512 giga and a 1 giga. No doubt these will become "too small" in no time.

What I really want these days is a small, lightweight high quality recorder to record and store authentic conversations. Later I would want to convert the whole works into a cd-rom.

Original Poster: I have Macs only. I survive quite nicely and w/o any viruses to date. So long as you have an up-to-date Office Suite, you ought to be all right. If you have big bucks, why not go for the Intel Mac. Connecting at school should not be a problem unless the school has some odd policies about using your own computer. Safari, Opera and Firefox are preferable to Explorer IMO.

Glenski - I believe that floppies CAN be transferred between Mac & Windows and have been able to be for quite some time, although most Macs don't come with floppies these days. The same goes for CDs. You can copy any file at all from Mac to Windows and vice versa, though that doesn't mean you can use it with a different system's software. Text files can be read by just about any text program, even if saved in the wrong format, although the layout may change significantly.

All that said, there will still be compatibility issues. I'm just saying that it's perfectly doable. As for floppies versus flash drives, you should really go and get a flash drive right now and through your floppies in the bin.

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Well, yours is bigger than mine. I have a tiny 1/2-inch drive (256 MB, but even the tiny ones can come with much more memory).

You can get an MP3 or MP4 player for recording and you can also use it to store files. I have a 1 GB MP4 player. It's just a cheap one, but I've used it to record speech. The quality isn't great, but no doubt you can find something better if you look around.

Family_Man wrote on May 3^rd, 2006, 10:50am:

i'm not 100% sure what you're asking, but i'll take a shot...

1) if you're having trouble TRANSFERRING the files (as in, copying them over) you have a number of options...i think the mac might come with a file transfer program that will pull all of the files off of your PC and put them on your mac...though i'm not sure, because i've never used it nor looked for it.

the surest bet for actually copying your files over is either a) a portable hard drive, or b) burning a couple of CDs with your important files on it.

2) if you've already got your files (word documents, etc.) transferred over and are having trouble viewing them, you might have to buy some new software.

one possible solution for replacing MS office is OpenOffice (which is free), but it's not 100% compatible (i.e., not every feature works perfectly when you go back and forth between MS office and OpenOffice.)  i've used OO now for a couple of years on a personal basis, but now that i'll be exchanging documents with colleagues, i've found that i need to go out and buy MS office since i can't afford to have issues.

still, it's an option for you if you want to avoid purchasing MS office for a while.  i believe the URL is www.openoffice.org.

ETA: the above site says that OO is available on the OSX 10.4 install disc.  there is a link to installation instructions at openoffice.org.

Thanks gaij and trickshot, I'll try that on Monday when I go back to school.

Generally, the problem PC users have with Mac files is the lack of file extensions (.doc or .jpg) though Office X for Mac should add these but hide them on a Mac. You can add them manually anyway. In fact a PC will open a Mac document in Word without the file extension, but not via double clicking. You can open it using the OPEN command.

Otherwise a modern version of Word for Windows and Word for Mac will read each other easily. The other problem we found is that PC users often still have ancient copies of Word 95 hanging around, and then there are issues.