[NT73]

How do you cope with the shortage of usb sockets? I saw two I think and one firewire.
My pc has 3 firewire and 3 usb1 + 5 usb2, and most are in permanent use, due to the fact that they are at the rear of the PC.
Printer, 2 scanners, ext HD, 2 cameras 1 vid camera.
I have free a usb1 and a 15pin ?? at the front under a panel (which are not usually used)

Do you have to purchase extra bits?
Can the firewire and usb2 cards be used on a Mac.
I was looking at the 20" desktop, but my good lady can't get her favourite calendar/card/etc. maker software for mac. (Printmaster)

[Pavel]

Easy - buy a USB hub. Stick one end into a usb port and you will have several new USB ports (typicaly 4 to 6) on the other hand. Not enough? buy 4 more USB hubs and plug them into the first USB hub. Need more ports??? Pavel

[matthew]

The back of my 2007 model has three USB, two FW400, and a FW800 port on the back of it. The keyboard also has two USB ports on it for connecting devices as well.

I have three external hard drives connected to a FW400 hub; they could be daisy-chained but I prefer to be able to power them on and off independently. My fourth HDD and CF card reader and daisy-chained to the FW800 port. That just leaves my keyboard, trackball, printer, scanner, two more card readers, and iPod to fight over the USB ports. I could live without a USB hub if I wanted to only connect the last few items as they were needed - they're pretty infrequent - but the way my 'office' is set up I need an extension and a hub to reach my printer regardless.

[NT73]

Thanks for that Matthew,
and Pavel If I spend nearly a grand on a mac I expect to have enough plugs in it without having to shell out extra.
My pc originally had quite a few, and a couple of empty slots for hardwired cards.
I will have another look at the macs next week.

[shuttertalk]

If you do get a hub, make sure it's powered. Some peripherals, such as USB hard drives, won't operate off the voltage supplied by the USB bus.

[Pavel]

Good point Julian. P

[NT73]

My ext drive runs off the mains, and is connected via usb lead to the pc. Do I still need a powered usb?
Also transfer of files...MS Word documents and MS works... Do they swop over easily?

[shuttertalk]

If the peripheral has its own power, then it's ok. I'm thinking more of those 2.5" portable hard drives that are bus powered.

File sharing between Mac and windows is simple and easy - I haven't had any problems with office documents (word, excel, etc.), although I don't know about MS works. Obviously, you would need the appropriate equivalent software, either office for mac, iwork, or even openoffice that can read the file formats.

I have a web drive which I mount on my mac, windows and linux computers - all read and write the files fine.

[Zig]

I tend to use a razor rather than Immac..tends to sting a bit.

:|
Whadd I do?

[NT73]

Zig.. Use 'Godley hand Cream' . Takes the 'Sting' out of it.

Matthew..You lost me a bit with 'file sharing' but I will pop down to pcworld and query their staff. Although I think I have more knowledge than they do.

[Zig]

Ah, very good NT

[matthew]

NT, it wasn't me that brought up that particular can of worms, but file sharing can be fun and easy. (That is, opening files created on one platform with the other.) The only real difficulty is that Microsoft sucks. If I e-mail a jpg to someone running Vista, he can't open it and the name is garbled. If I e-mail him a zip file, he can't open it. If I e-mail the exact same thing to my partner with her old Compaq PC, it all works perfectly.

I just (five minutes ago) ran into a problem that a web page linked to a Microsoft Word document, and my partner couldn't open it because her PC doesn't have Word installed. (The software is expensive, the format is vulnerable, and the document shouldn't have been in that format in the first place, but that's another story.) I needed to open it on my Mac, using Pages - the Apple word processor - and save it as a PDF so that a Windows user could use a file created on a Windows PC with Microsoft software.

And people tell me that Macs aren't compatible with Windows....

[shuttertalk]

If I e-mail a jpg to someone running Vista, he can't open it and the name is garbled. If I e-mail him a zip file, he can't open it. If I e-mail the exact same thing to my partner with her old Compaq PC, it all works perfectly.

No way!! Are you sure about this?

I've got Vista running in a Virtual Machine on my iMac, and I share files between the two easily. It could be a problem with that person's machine in particular....

Julian