In the switchover to an academy (the new, good kind) my school has decided to try and overhaul as many as the departments as it can with the small amount of extra moolah they now have.
In Media's case, we're getting Macbook Pros as our current laptops were manufactured in 2005, not ideal. Now I personally am a PC guy, but i completely understand why a Macbook is a more logical option given that we do huge amounts of video and photo editing. I'm going to bootcamp it with Windows 7 (licence also supplied by the school, lovely fellows) and have my own copy of CS5 running on that. I'm going to install CS3 Production Premium using the schools site-wide licence on the Mac as i really can't afford another licence for CS5 out of my own pocket.
Now, i'd like to get the most out of it, but purely for work. I very much want to avoid turning this into a leisure device as i really appreciate the school forking out for it and don't want to take advantage. What's the best presentation and word processing software? I'd also like some form of video converter as CS3 is quite limited in what it supports. What sort of accessories are essential, particularly for hooking it up to a VGA projector?
What else is there worth getting for a workplace Mac? I literally know nothing about OSX so go as basic as possible, i want to make the most of it!
In Media's case, we're getting Macbook Pros as our current laptops were manufactured in 2005, not ideal. Now I personally am a PC guy, but i completely understand why a Macbook is a more logical option given that we do huge amounts of video and photo editing. I'm going to bootcamp it with Windows 7 (licence also supplied by the school, lovely fellows) and have my own copy of CS5 running on that. I'm going to install CS3 Production Premium using the schools site-wide licence on the Mac as i really can't afford another licence for CS5 out of my own pocket.
Now, i'd like to get the most out of it, but purely for work. I very much want to avoid turning this into a leisure device as i really appreciate the school forking out for it and don't want to take advantage. What's the best presentation and word processing software? I'd also like some form of video converter as CS3 is quite limited in what it supports. What sort of accessories are essential, particularly for hooking it up to a VGA projector?
What else is there worth getting for a workplace Mac? I literally know nothing about OSX so go as basic as possible, i want to make the most of it!