Just recently got the new 11" air. What is the best word processor you guys would recommend for school? I downloaded Pages and I think its pretty good, but whats the best?

Cant go wrong with open office

pages is good. I find open office to mess up certain heading formats when transfered to MS office/pages.

Sigh I wanted to get a MBP so bad! The only thing that's holding me back is the fact that I will use to play some games like WoW and TF2 so MBP might not be able to handle it. Also I watch a lot of movies and use Torrent so I am 100% sure if there is a torrnet program made for MBP and does VLC run on MBP ><

i'm quite confident any of the macs at the moment can handle all your above requests. is WoW or TF2 even that demanding? or are you running them at extreme settings?

i use utorrent and vlc in OSX.

i've given up on cleaning it since it has this powdery or not completely and uniformly translucent (i know it's not 100% transparent) texture on the inside. and cause my unibody is 2 yrs old now and I just want to take off the moshi screen and kb guards and drop a SSD in it.

Word.

open office or pages since you already have that....stop the thinking of going back to word just because youre used to it...

I use to run wow on my 2008 mbp window mode on osx no problem. Had to run TF2 and L4D on Windows since it wasn't compatible then. I can run SC2 and all the above listed natively on OSX no problem on my 2011 i7 13in MBP

I use transmission for torrents. light and stable
VLC runs just fine on a mac, doesnt take too much to handle video playback anyways!

iTunes on the other hand..is fucking magnificent on a mac haha

I use Open Office for personal and business. I've never had a issues with formatting with the word processor, but there are the rare times when the spreadsheets look gimpy when exported to PDF. Can't really complain though as it's a really good office suite for the price! The one thing Open Office will not do are macros.

Also, there is Neo Office which seems to be really good too - also free.

The current MBP will handle everything you throw at it - don't worry. For torrents, I use Vuze - some say that it's a resource hog, but I've never had any problems with it. VLC runs on a MBP with no issues at all.

My MBP is a late 2009 17" 3.06Ghz upgraded with 8GB RAM & 7200 rpm HDD, and I've had no issues running Vuze and working on 21MP RAW image files in Lightroom3 & Photoshop CS5 (and several Firefox tabs open) simultaneously. I do have an external Firewire800 scratch disk for Photoshop though.

seriously, TF2 and WoW run on the macbook air with no problems, let alone running it on the macbook pro.

LibreOffice is better than OpenOffice, Office 2011 is the way to go.

Transmission is better than Vuze, the web interface is nice.

Perian is a Quicktime plugin with all of the codecs you need.

Flip4Mac is a Quicktime plugin to play WMV.

VLC as always is great.

iTunes is a great music library, but I prefer using a small stand alone player to listen to music that is NOT yet part of my iTunes library. Vox is a simple lightweight player.

Waiting on the new Macbook Pros....

I personally like Movist better than VLC. I switched after some friend recommended me (I was having problem playing some pr0n. :D)... and never looked back.

do you know when they come out?

Best best would be in about 60 days... this would allow them to sell the current model for back to school and release a new model before the christmas rush.

Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

I kinda wish I waited too, but I figured what the hell. It's gonna be a few years before a quadcore i7 is too slow to run stuff. Or atleast, that's what I keep telling myself :okay:

anyone have recommendations on getting a replacement battery for a mpb (2.4Ghz/ATI-gen)? online/local? it's pretty old but my friend just put a SSD in it and he wants to keep using it minus shelling out at the Apple store.

check simply computing, they have batteries
its not apple OEM, but its still good

he got one from intelligentbatteries.ca yesterday (local). the battery can't establish contact until you apply pressure. seemed unreliable so he's returning it. i'll tell him about simply computing thnx.

I've used a few "OEM/aftermarket" batteries and they have all been disappointing.
The problems are as follows:

1. The charge doesn't last as long as an original battery.
2. The life of the battery decreases very fast. After 1 year you lose 50% of max charge.
3. The fit and finish are horrible. On an older white macbook the foot of the battery was too tall, so it would cause a wobble.

I only buy original batteries for my notebooks. Especially if it's my primary or work related computer. You really get what you pay for.

anyone switched from a PC to a Mac? If so, why and what do you like about the Mac.

things work.....like, the way they're supposed to. This is coming from someone who's been a Windows user since 3.0 days and flirted with BSD linux for a while.

I personally find they don't work how I like them to and a lot of programs I use are either way better on Windows (i.e. Excel, some of my games) or simply don't work on a Mac (many of my games, my cabinet design software, etc). Meanwhile, my SO likes the Macs better for what she does, which is primarily graphic design, web design, photo-editing, and basic internet use. She uses the two Macs, I use the three PCs ... It's a personal preference thing ...

And, to anyone who tells you Excel is the same on a Mac as it is on a PC, laugh in their face for me, please. Nowhere near the same number or level of functions, no macro support, argument limitations, no PivotTables/Charts, etc. It's a fucking nightmare working with Excel for Mac unless all you're using it for is extremely basic spreadsheets (in which case, use OpenOffice for free. It's just as shitty, but at least it doesn't cost you anything). I've had to completely redo some of my spreadsheets from scratch because they were so broken when loading into Office for Mac 2008/2011, yet worked perfectly in Office 2007/2010.

I like the mac because its an absolute beast for school,
reading, studying, going through notes etc.

and the upside it doesnt support any of the games I like so I cant get distracted lol