Latest Lists

Any tips for sharing files between Mac and PC when I buy my new MacBook Pro?

I have had to use a PC for work for the past 7 years but I am now going freelance as Digital Producer mainly producing broadband video content for the web (flash video) and also moving into music production (edits, reedits and learning music production using Logic Pro). I have bought a 320GB Seagate hard disk and will be buying top end MacBook Pro (can't wait!). I used a PC and Mac in my previous job designing web sites, and seem to remember that I was forever overcoming gremlins of sharing files! I am hoping this has improved since than, and specifically I want to know if there any rules or tips I should follow on filenaming, formats etc to ensure I can share files across PC or Mac. Lots of my files with be vidoe formats (mpg2, mov etc) The MacBook Pro will be my main machine and I will still use Sony Vaio laptop or a PC for some things (testing etc). I want avoid fruitless frustrating hours due to incorectly named or formatted files and other things. Any tips or advise is welcome.

Public Comments

1. OS X supports both FAT32 (which you will use on your HDD) and the SMB protocol (windows network file sharing). You should have no issues if your HDD is formatted to that filesystem. I believe there is software for OS X to read NTFS (even though, NTFS is a failure as a filesystem), but I am not sure if it works out of the box. Cheers.
2. not sure but some times emailing things to your self can be handy maybe a bit slow theo
3. You will have no problems opening standard graphics files. If Preview can't open them, Graphic Converter will (should come bundled). if you don't have Office for Mac, in a pinch, Word files can be opened in text edit. Apple iWork is a good substitute for Office, and way cheaper. Mac's usually don't need the file suffix to read it, unless it is a file the requires the parent application. By clicking on the file icon, you can then select Apple-I for info. You can also tell your Mac what application to use to open similar files while in that window. Mac's can't read .pub files though. And Publisher is not available for Mac. You'd have to run that through something with windows. We keep a Mac Mini in dual boot set-up, primarily for those freaking publisher files.
4. This won't be the greatest answer but I did some researching online to figure out how to get my mac and my hubby's pc to 'see' each other and do file sharing. I got it to work, however, since we've moved to our new house, I can't seem to get it working again and I have no idea why. I work in graphic design and our work is set up with pcs and macs being about to 'see' each other on the network. I do remember it having to do with the pc having a password of some sort... like the mac created a password for the pc and on the pc end you enter that password. I don't know, I know this answer isn't very helpful, sorry. I just know it took a while for me to figure it out and I'm far from being computer illiterate. I just gave up on trying to make it work again because I was so freakin frustrated. Maybe I just overlooked something and made it harder than it needed to be. Hopefully you have better luck. My advice is to do some searching online. Oh yeah and the file naming is a bit better, obviously you still shouldn't use spaces, commas, dashes, backslashes, etc. Unscores are ok though and keep the file names to about 7 to 10 characters. tif, eps, jpeg's.... the usual stuff is all still good.