I work in the retail store of an Apple Specialist and these are definitely the most common questions, along with, "what firewall and virus scan software do I need?"
On the topic of Office, I tend to remind people that if they're only going to use it for home use and don't need to collaborate with Windows users, AppleWorks is still a good starting point since it can import & export Word & Excel documents. The Student/Teacher Edition of Office, as Erik mentioned, is the best deal (and actually gives you three licenses), but many retailers also have OEM bundles of Microsoft Office for only slightly more than the Student/Teacher Edition.
For customers who are not familiar with Mac OS X and are coming from Windows I offer a quick overview of what the major UI differences are, such as: the Start Menu's functionality is split between the Apple Menu & the Dock, with the Task Bar's functionality also integrated into the Dock; there is a single menu bar for all applications, which changes focus, and the current running application is designated by its own menu; the contents of My Computer are listed right on the Desktop, so "Macintosh HD" is the equivalent of the "C:" drive (and the Applications folder is located immediately inside it); and System Preferences is the equivalent of Control Panels & Setting (or whatever it's now called in XP). There are many more things I walk people through, but people seem to grasp those explanations extremely quickly and are comfortable playing with the computers nearly immediately.
I haven't been to an Apple Store, yet, as it's been a while since I made it into Boston or New York, but I imagine they have a pretty good setup for inviting people to learn about Mac OS X.
by Morgan Aldridge — Dec 23
On the topic of Office, I tend to remind people that if they're only going to use it for home use and don't need to collaborate with Windows users, AppleWorks is still a good starting point since it can import & export Word & Excel documents. The Student/Teacher Edition of Office, as Erik mentioned, is the best deal (and actually gives you three licenses), but many retailers also have OEM bundles of Microsoft Office for only slightly more than the Student/Teacher Edition.
For customers who are not familiar with Mac OS X and are coming from Windows I offer a quick overview of what the major UI differences are, such as: the Start Menu's functionality is split between the Apple Menu & the Dock, with the Task Bar's functionality also integrated into the Dock; there is a single menu bar for all applications, which changes focus, and the current running application is designated by its own menu; the contents of My Computer are listed right on the Desktop, so "Macintosh HD" is the equivalent of the "C:" drive (and the Applications folder is located immediately inside it); and System Preferences is the equivalent of Control Panels & Setting (or whatever it's now called in XP). There are many more things I walk people through, but people seem to grasp those explanations extremely quickly and are comfortable playing with the computers nearly immediately.
I haven't been to an Apple Store, yet, as it's been a while since I made it into Boston or New York, but I imagine they have a pretty good setup for inviting people to learn about Mac OS X.