Replacing Dependency on WinXP with Mac Software!

Here’s a few of them:

– 1Password = I was an avid user of Roboform to help autofill my web passwords and web forms. They hint on their forum that they are making Roboform for the Mac, however currently they do not. So that’s how I found out about 1Password. So far, it works almost identical to Roboform, autofills very well and get this- it even imports from Roboform! That’s been a smooth transition I must say.

– Office 2008 for Mac = I must say that I do like Outlook. When I moved to Outlook 2007 for windows awhile ago, it was different than the older versions but I loved it. Since my work has Exchange, Outlook is a necessary tool (especially for email and calendars). So at first glance after I installed Office 2008 on my mac, which includes Entourage 2008 (Mac’s version of Outlook), I must say I had a love/hate feeling with it. It’s quite a bit different when you first look at it however most if not all features are there (at least the ones that I commonly use). Even more surprising is that you don’t need to VPN into work since Entourage 2008 uses OWA for most of the communication. Now to browse the Global Address Book at work, you’ll need to have VPN or be inside their network, but everything else, Email, Calendars, Shared Calendars, etc seem to work fine, all without VPN hassles.

– Adium = On my Windows PC, I’ve been using Trillian for a long time. Adium has totally stepped in and replaced Trillian for me and it works just as great, if not better.

– VMware Fusion = For the occasional program that I don’t have a mac version “replacement” yet, Fusion allows you to run Windows inside a Virtual Machine. The most impressive feature that I’ve been using a lot is called “unity”. This allows you to start Windows programs (that have been installed in the Windows virtual machine) right on your Mac desktop (including minimizing that application/window to the Mac icon bar at the bottom of the screen, just like a Mac program).

– iTunes = I love iTunes ability to manage my music efficiently with a nice clean interface. I’ve even recommended iTunes to family and non-tech friends, and they have no problems organizing their music.