EQMac.com

I've been an avid PC person for years, and have much disdain for macs due to my huge lack of inability to use them. Enter -> EQmac, exit -> inability. I now have to learn how to use one, so I have a few questions before I pick up a used one.

Right now I'm looking at -> http://www.gainsaver.com/Catalog/Detail ... CCode=1015^Apple&CCode=1026^Power+Macintosh&cICode=43684

For those who don't want to go to the link, its a Power Mac G5 dual core 2 Ghz, they will expand it to 2 gigs of ram for a very reasonable price. Comes with OS X 10.4 Tiger, which from what I've read is a good platform for eqmac. Total cost ends up being about 230 bucks, which is acceptable in my book.

Here is my goal and where my question comes in. I want to play EQmac (obvious), and I don't think that computer will have any issues with it at all. I always enjoyed dual boxing and am quite good at it (no need to use 3rd party software for me to do it). I always alt+tabbed, and I want to know two things, will this computer be able to handle that sufficiently, and what is the mac version of alt+tabbing, is there an eqwindowmac?

In addition, since I likely won't play this game for the end of time and I'll then have a mac sitting around that I have disdain for, I'm assuming it would make a fantastic media player in my living room for playing music. The real stretch is what are the possibilities of making it capable of playing blue rays, or is that just a waste of time and I should just get a player once I invest in bringing this up to those standards.

Lastly, it's been a long time since I played an EQ game, and being older my memory of what era goes to what amount of graphic memory, is the ATI Radeon 9600 XT at 128 MB DDR ram going to be solid for eqmac?

Second lastly mainly due to me not wanting to edit out the first one, I have two samsung monitors that have DVI and VGA inputs. Being very unfamiliar with macs I'm assuming one of these would work fine, or do I need a mac compatible monitor or something?

All answers greatly appreciated, thanks.

Couple tips in "learning" how to use a mac. If you can't figure something out you are trying too hard... I can't tell you how many times I had the old windows mindset of having to manually do every little thing because the os was too stupid to manage itself and tried to support legacy equipment back to the 1960's. In general you won't have to do half the crap you did to make Windows work well.

Second tip is learn your *nix terminal commands, really nice to be able to pop open terminal and bend the OS to your will if you really want to, muh ha ha.

Third, don't pay for software, there are almost always open source alternatives to anything you want to buy for a Mac, and it usually works better. It's nice to be *nix.

On your choice of machines that looks good, get as much ram as possible, graphics card won't matter much (our client doesn't hardly use it anyways), any old monitor will work as long as it'll plug into the graphics card. If you plan on hardcore boxing you might want to consider the "quad" G5 (dual, dual core G5) Also check to see if they are giving you a Dual G5 or a Dual Core G5, not too much of a difference, but the dual core has better overall system specs.

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im in the same boat as you, been using PCs since the womb and first-time osx user for eqmac. unfortunately osx is pretty fucking terrible, although most on this forum will tell you otherwise =p

once you buy your mac and set it up, here are some tips from a fellow convertee.

1) play with a PC keyboard. mac keyboards have all the modifier buttons in the wrong places and the function keys are only half the size of normal keys. no, don't bother trying to rewire your brain - just play with a PC keyboard. (by default flag = command)
2) dont use a mighty mouse. your new mac will come with a mac mouse. it sucks so bad you will want to cry within 5 minutes of using it, so save yourself the trouble and throw it in the garbage disposal.
3) dont use stock mouse drivers. download OSX ones from the manufactures website, if at all available. if it isn't available (or you did download them and your mouse still sucks complete ass) download a program called USBOverdrive and toy with the settings. (know that your mouse will never be as fast and snappy as it is on PC. welcome to osx)
4) most hotkeys on PC that are control+whatever are command+whatever on mac (aka cut, copy, paste, undo, find, etc). download a program called DoubleCommand to duplicate command/flag to control. (this will essentially remove control completely, but trust me it has absolutely no use anyway)
5) disable/remap hotkeys that interfere with eq. go to system prefs --> dashboard+expose - disable all the hotkeys in there. then go to system prefs --> keyboard --> keyboard shortcuts and disable all the ones that will overlap with EQ hotkeys or ones that you might accidentally press.
6) boxing multiple characters on the same box. if 10.4, download VirtueDesktops. if 10.5, download VirtueDesktops. if 10.6, use Spaces (which is built-in) and disable the sliding animation.
7) alt tab on mac is command tab. unfortunately, command tab on mac sucks balls and doesn't properly switch to applications that are minimized, so you won't be using it in the same way that you do on a PC. also, there is no way to remap it to alt-tab. thanks apple! (know that the osx expose feature is an alternative to command tab, but it also has a bunch of downfalls like not working from within EQ and not working with VirtueDesktops, but you can play around with it)
8) depending on your setup (like if your mac is going to sit at the same desk your PC is), consider buying a KVM, aka

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... th%20Audio

Or you could just forget about PCs and simply learn how to use a Mac. It'll take you all of a week or so to get used to all those silly keys that are different than on Windows. After a while you'll be able to use either OS with equal aplomb and no fuss.

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Lord Protector of Destiny
Grandmaster Baker/Brewer
Tanks for the memories
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