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Originally Posted by dklassen
I've been a PC user for over 20 years. About a month ago I bought a MAC Mini...
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I am late coming into this discussion, but I just joined today. I just wanted to add a few things not covered by others.
PhotoShop Elements is a subset of the full application and offers enough tools for most users for touching up, stitching individual pictures into one panorama picture, create contact sheets, picture packages, etc. It lists for $89, but is frequently on sale somewhere for less.
There is program named ImageWell, which is free, which provides cropping, screen capturing, and marking up with arrows, cutouts, and sending the resulting file to a local disk or web site via ftp. It does have an extras packages for $15, but the basic is great for making tutorial type graphics.
Of course, your Mac Mini should have come with iPhoto which I use as a library. While I can do some quick and dirty fixes, it can also use PhotoShop Elements automatically to do heavier editing.
There are a host of shareware programs, including GraphicConverter. This program converts just about anything to anything and then some. It also does have some editing capabilities. Oh, there is Corel Draw also.
While I do a lot of web sites, I have never used Front Page. I know it is supported all over the place with templates and extensions. I started with a text editor (BBEdit) for my data base web sites, and at some point started using Adobe GoLive. My current version (6), while it works fine, should be upgraded to take advantage of more modern web features. I was thinking of upgrading, but I'm not sure if GoLive or DreamWeaver will be Adobe's mainstream program letting the other go away. So, for less than a quarter of the upgrade price, I got a program named RapidWeaver. It is a great program, reasonable, well supported with plugins and themes, and good community which shares their good expriences.
I don't have a suggestion for Thumbs Up. Although, if the picture files have a thumbnail included in the file, they should show up in the icon view of the finder (the size can be set in the View Options). Selecting a group and opening with Preview, will give you a menu (list) of pictures and can be displayed. I'm not sure what your needs are, but wanted to mention iPhoto again, it does a good job of organizing and viewing pictures.
I'm sure with Parallels you can do anything (I use VMware Fusion for a number of reasons - bigger company for one and I got in at half price during the beta). I use it pretty much for checking my sites with IE6...
Most mainstream applications exist on both platforms and are pretty much equal. It is the small applications which Windows may excel with, but I think the quality of Mac programs, for the most part, is a bit higher (through all the years...).
One other thing, it was mentioned there is a Mac club in The Villages. It meets twice a month - Q&A and basics, Sept 18, at 1:30 pm at the Saddlebrook Rec Center and the main meeting (iPhoto - Quick DVD for Fun) Sept 26, 7 pm also at Saddlebook.
Jim