my new computer

[nat]

I personally love Quicktime. It's not so great disk space-wise, but its quality and speed is unmatched IMO.

WMP/WMV can be slow to decode in real-time depending on the quality of the video, the speed of your computer and the player you are using. WMP in particular is a gigantic CPU hog. VLC is better but as has already been indicated, it won't play certain files. I'm interested to try out this Flip4Mac WMV.

Why piss away a few hundred bucks to install windows?  I thought the point of a Mac was to get the pure awesomeness of OSX.

Don't. Many current OS X users (myself included) are people who switched over when they discovered how much Windows XP blows. Most of said people still have Windows install discs lying around so installing a second Windows OS on your Mac shouldn't cost any money. In the case of my mom, when we bougt her an iMac back in December, she needed to be able to dual-boot because the applications she used for work ran exclusively under Windows. I just used her old XP install discs and it didn't cost us a penny. She does her work in Windows and everything else gets done on the Mac side.

Personally, I haven't bothered to install Windows on my Mac. Unless you have a practical reason to do so, there is no point. If I ever decide there is some Windows application I just can't live without, I'll probably go the "Parallels" route rather than Boot Camp.

And yes, you are right, the whole point of the Mac experience is the pure awesomeness of OS X.

[Joe Redifer]

I'm not sold on "Parallels" yet.  Boot Camp works natively, and Parallels and other similar apps have to share CPU and RAM time with OS X, plus it is expensive (around $80 or so).  The nice thing is drag and drop between the two, though.  Windows is to weak to recognized HFS+ formatted hard drives, so none of your Mac drives will be seen by Windows, ever.  The Mac will recognize FAT drives (and probably NTFS as well) so you can drag files to and from the Windows desktop or wherever while you are booted up in OSX.  Just create an alias on your desktop to the folder where you want to transfer stuff to and from in Windows.

[nat]

The Mac will recognize FAT drives (and probably NTFS as well) so you can drag files to and from the Windows desktop or wherever while you are booted up in OSX.  Just create an alias on your desktop to the folder where you want to transfer stuff to and from in Windows.

This is an interesting subject... Like I mentioned before, we set my mom up via the Boot Camp program. Her Windows partition is NTFS. The Mac side can see & access the NTFS drive, but it won't let you write to it. You can open/read any file you want but it won't let you save. We haven't figured out why this is. I'm not sure if there is a preference setting somewhere we can flip or if it is an inherent limitation of Boot Camp.

[td741]

OSX can't write to NTFS...  I didn't bother looking for a 3rd party driver that might allow NTFS writting, but at the moment you'd only be able to write to NTFS via Windows.

[nat]

OSX can't write to NTFS...  I didn't bother looking for a 3rd party driver that might allow NTFS writting, but at the moment you'd only be able to write to NTFS via Windows.

That's what I figured. Perhaps they'll release an updated Boot Camp at some point that will allow NTFS writing.

In other news, I guess the 2.0Ghz mini is newer than I thought. I just read an article that stated it was released this last Tuesday (Aug 7). Apple apparently kept it fairly quiet, trying to focus attention on the new slimmer iMac.

[td741]

Yes, the new Minis were released on the same day... The only mention at the Apple event was during the Q&A session (they didn't even show the Q&A in the posted video).

[SignOfZeta]

I've been over this disc format issue a million times. Windows won't see HFS without third party software. OSX can read NTFS, but not write to it. Either can read/write FAT, but FAT has a file size limitation of around...4GB, I think it is, which can be an impossible obstacle depending on what you are doing.

The best way to share stuff is to put it all on a NAS drive and transfer over a network. This solves...pretty much the entire puzzle.

[Joe Redifer]

Nat, my Windows partition is 15GB and is formatted as FAT.  I can drag and drop stuff to the Windows partition.  The Mac won't let you make an NTFS drive unless you somehow do it as you are installing Windows.  I don't dare work with large video files in Windows, so the 4GB limit won't affect me.

Zeta, do you know of the 3rd party software (preferably freeware, of course) that will let Windows see HFS+?

Nat:
Hi, it's me again.  How are you?  Good to hear.  I am well.  Anyway you're probably right.  I imagine in OS X 10.5 "Puma" or whatever damned cat they named it after Boot Camp will probably include that ability as well as driver for the Windows side that lets it see HFS+.  That'd make it much better for copying files back and forth.

[Turbo D]

I guess its my fault for viewing crappy videos in fullscreen  :oops: , quicktime is by far the best of the three major video viewers.

[SignOfZeta]

Zeta, do you know of the 3rd party software (preferably freeware, of course) that will let Windows see HFS+?

Well, there is MacDrive, which has been on the market for...seriously, I don't know. A long-ass time. I think maybe as far back as System 6 and b/w Macs. I've never used it though.

[nat]

Nat, my Windows partition is 15GB and is formatted as FAT.  I can drag and drop stuff to the Windows partition.  The Mac won't let you make an NTFS drive unless you somehow do it as you are installing Windows.  I don't dare work with large video files in Windows, so the 4GB limit won't affect me.

Yeah, I created her NTFS partition with the XP installation program. She wanted a fairly large partition for Windows because her work involves extremely large files. Does FAT have a ceiling on partition sizes, like 32 GB or something? I seem to recall that this was the reason I had to go with NTFS. If not, then I need to be kicking myself in the ass right now.

Hi, it's me again.  How are you?  Good to hear.  I am well.  Anyway you're probably right.  I imagine in OS X 10.5 "Puma" or whatever damned cat they named it after Boot Camp will probably include that ability as well as driver for the Windows side that lets it see HFS+.  That'd make it much better for copying files back and forth.

We can hope. But it's the logical next step, and Apple is just awesome like that.

[Joe Redifer]

I don't know about the partition size, but I think FAT can be on almost any size of disc, it's just the files themselves and the way they are written is what's restricted.  I can't explain it well, but FAT has bigger or more "empty bits" to fill up a file, so when all is said and done, a file on a FAT system will take up a little more space than on an NTFS system.  Kind of like the difference with HFS and HFS+.  The size difference isn't much, but if you have tons of files on your drive, then the amount of empty space that you can't use could be significant because it all adds up.

[SignOfZeta]

I think the max partition size in FAT32 (I'm assuming that's what you used) is 2TB, which is probably not going to be an issue. The problem for me was the file size limit of 4GB. If you're doing video editing, that's just not going to cut it. If you aren't doing video editing, then chances are it won't effect you.

[Joe Redifer]

I think using Windows itself would be more of a detriment to video editing.

[SignOfZeta]

I've used Adobe Premier a lot under windows, and also a great deal of Final Cut Pro. Basically, they are both too much for me to totally grasp, but the defining feature of Premier seems to be that is crashes CONSTANTLY, which has been the case for years and years. I don't know how they actually sell the thing version after version.

FC Pro is pretty nice, but costs too f*cking much. I see they have an Express version now for $300. That's pretty nice.

The one program I had a blast with was DVD Studio Pro. I made myself a DVD of fan-subbed Macross Zero episodes with hella transitions, and super DVD features. It was only later that I realized that I hate all that fancy DVD shit. I almost drove myself nuts trying to watch the DVD I made.