Is Windows giving you pause? Ready to make the leap to the Mac instead? There has never been a better time to switch from Windows to Mac, and this incomparable guide will help you make a smooth transition. New York Times columnist and Missing Manuals creator David Pogue gets you past three challenges: transferring your stuff, assembling Mac programs so you can do what you did with Windows, and learning your way around Mac OS X. Why is this such a good time to switch? Upgrading from one version of Windows to another used to be simple. But now there's Windows Vista, a veritable resource hog that forces you to relearn everything. Learning a Mac is not a piece of cake, but once you do, the rewards are oh-so-much better. No viruses, worms or spyware. No questionable firewalls, inefficient permissions, or other strange features. Just a beautiful machine with a thoroughly reliable system. And if you're still using Windows XP, we've got you covered, too. If you're ready to take on Mac OS X Leopard, the latest edition of this bestselling guide tells you everything you need to know:

• Transferring your stuff -- Moving photos, MP3s, and Microsoft Office documents is the easy part. This book gets you through the tricky things: extracting your email, address book, calendar, Web bookmarks, buddy list, desktop pictures, and MP3 files.

• Re-creating your software suite -- Big-name programs (Word, Photoshop, Firefox, Dreamweaver, and so on) are available in both Mac and Windows versions, but hundreds of other programs are available only for Windows. This guide identifies the Mac equivalents and explains how to move your data to them.

• Learning Leopard -- Once you've moved into the Mac, a final task awaits: Learning your way around. Fortunately, you're in good hands with the author of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, the #1 bestselling guide to the Macintosh.

Moving from Windows to a Mac successfully and painlessly is the one thing Apple does not deliver. Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition is your ticket to a new computing experience.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 44 Ratings

Makes A Difficult Adjustment Much Easier - 2009-11-29
Reviewer Rating:
Having been a Windows user all my life, when I bought my Mac this summer I needed help, far more help than the Mac pamphlet that came with the machine (or the Mac itself) had to offer. I was taken immediately by the beauty, speed, and reliability of the Mac, but actually doing anything useful with it was a completely different issue. Things I had been able to do unconsciously on the PC became difficult to impossible on the Mac; that's where this book came in. The book is fairly thorough and the author, David Pogue, is good at explaining things, while the generally very helpful illustrations reinforce his points.

My advice for someone who is considering a Mac who has no experience with the Mac Operating System would be to buy this book first and think long and hard about whether you really want to switch or not, as it is a big adjustment. If you do decide to switch you will need this manual (or another good quality book) to help you when you get stuck, which will be very frequently: don't believe the rumors that the Mac OS is intuitive; it isn't if you haven't used it before. I now have a Windows 7 machine and if I had to do it over again I would have passed on the Mac altogether and skipped from Windows XP to 7 while avoiding the horrid aberration of Vista.

The book isn't perfect, and one annoyance for me was the index which is not even close to exhaustive. It needs to be better to help look up things: an example: neither "restore" or "system restore" are in the index; these are terms that a PC user could reasonably be expected to search for. Still the good outweighs the bad here, and I recommend the book to users new to the Mac.

paperback book - 2010-01-14
Reviewer Rating:
Although the service techs at the Apple store can answer any or all of your questions about their products (i.e. iMac), you will need this book at home for reference as the numerous small and sometimes larger issues arrive, and you need the answer directly.

Great for going PC to MAC - 2009-12-26
Reviewer Rating:
We just got our first Mac and, as expected, there were things that we were not used to in operation of the computer.
"Switching to Mac" made it very easy to transition over to the Mac. I would recommend this book for anyone that is going from Windows to the Mac operating system.

Feelin' good about the switch! - 2009-12-05
Reviewer Rating:
I am in process of making the switch and am enjoying this book very much. It is well thought out in terms of approach, is not afraid to make important points repeatedly, and is making the transition both fun and challenging. The humor is well done and timely placed in the text.Unlike the PC world where "Help" is considered an opportunity for the software developer to prove that the developer knows more than the customer, this approach to explaining and educating the customer means I will stay close to Apple products and to the "missing Manual" series. Well done!

Good How-to Book - 2009-09-12
Reviewer Rating:
I just purchased my first MacBook Pro, which is the the first Mac I've owned. While I have learned a lot from the Apple tutorials and online help guides this book offers more details and helpful hints. Good reference.

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