A while ago I considered making the move from PC to Mac. There were a few reasons really, to be honest the main one was the seemingly inevitable degradation of Windows after a bit of use.

We’ve all experienced that!

Of course, Macs look great and we all know they perform well; given that Apple brought out a new range last Autumn it seemed like a good move.

As a web designer and general business owner I had a few concerns:

• How could I best transfer all of my files from my PC to Mac?
• As a hoarder, I have some serious email storage, so how could I transfer my emails, calendar and contacts from Outlook to Mac?
• Whilst I’m only an intermediate web developer, I did and still do use .net for alot of my sites (you know how much I love the mojoPortal CMS right?); how could I continue .net development on the Mac?
• As a Visual Web Developer user, what was the best Mac web design software to move  to?
• What Mac Office Software could I use?

Solutions – how I moved from PC to Mac

How could I best transfer all of my files from my PC to Mac?

There were a few options for this and the easiest one was just to back up my files to an external hard drive and move the files from PC to Mac that way, kinda obvious really I guess. I couldn’t find any fancy tool I was convinced by that did it for me, but once I’d moved the files from PC to Mac I found the file system on Snow Leopard to be so much more intuitive. A clean out ensued!

I did use VMWare Fusion 3 for a few things which I’ll come to later. I mention it here because it comes with the VMWare Fusion 3 Migration Assistant. This is a great tool which allows you to install a small program on your PC, letting you effortlessly move your PC file system to the Mac – it really is that simple.

I had a fully virtual PC running on my Mac within 10 minutes. Excellent work by the VMWare Fusion 3 team, I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

How could I transfer my emails, calendar and contacts from Outlook to Mac?

This one proved quite difficult to a degree. The Outlook .pst file I was running was huge and so converting this directly from Outlook to Mac wasn’t really an option.

The calendar and contacts weren’t really an issue as all of these were on my iPhone – a simple sync with the new Mac sorted those right out.

To move the emails I found a great piece of software called O2M by Little Machines which is entirely focused on migrating Outlook to Mac; emails and all folders can be easily dropped into a format supported by Mac Mail. The only thing you’ll need to do is set up your rules and so on as they aren’t migrated with the actual data.

.net development on the Mac

Again, this is a tough one. To be honest, I like things to work out of the box and trying to set up .net development on the Mac can sometimes hinder this!

There is the fantastic Mono Project which allows .net development on the Mac, but to be honest I’ve not set it up or tried it. The reason being, I trust the set up I had on my PC and, for the license cost of VMWare Fusion 3, I decided to carry on using my PC for this.

I’ll try the Mono Project soon though, time permitting. I’m really keen to see how I can use this to work with mojoPortal in Snow Leopard.

The VMWare Fusion 3 solution really works great though. I mentioned above that I’d created a full backup of my PC using the Migration Assistant – this can simply be dropped into VMWare and a virtual machine set up within minutes. The beauty is that the file system from your PC is still intact. I use this as a “line in the sand” from when I moved from the PC to Mac, if ever I need to dip into an old file version I can simply grab it from the virtual PC.

The .net development on the Mac works well, as well as it did on my PC and I’ve allocated 1gb of memory (out of 4gb) to run my virtual PC. Runs beautifully.

One real cosmetic benefit of VMWare Fusion 3 is the way you can run Windows applications directly from your dock without being constrained to running one full “Windows” window on your Mac desktop. This is achieved through the amazing Unity View. Check it out….

What was the best Mac web design software to move  to?

This for me was an easy decision – having already purchased Adobe CS4 Web Premium suite, I just installed this and off I went. I do love the Adobe products (remember I like things to work out of the box) so for me, CS4 remained the best Mac web design software choice.

That said, there are plenty of free Mac web design software applications and design packages that you can quickly install and try out. CS4 is an expensive purchase, and sometimes a little overkill. Try out some of the freeware and see if you can find something you get along with.

What Mac Office Software could I use?

There are plenty of options for this. I’m running Open Office which I find to be great Mac office software, however the standard Microsoft Mac Office software is a very affordable choice if you want the familiarity of Microsoft’s flagship office suite.

It’s worth also considering Google Docs – I like the idea of having my documents accessible online from anywhere, but just haven’t been brave enough to make the jump!

PC to Mac – conclusion

My experience moving from PC to Mac was largely enjoyable, after a bit of research into the various applications that would suit me I managed to get up and running fully within an hour or so. I hope I’ve detailed enough to save you having to do the research I had to do; how has your PC to Mac experience been?