Advice on quick learning of Mac and PC troublesooting.

[dino8031]

I'm thinking of taking a job as Mac and PC tech with my local school district. My background is in a PC and Widows 2000 Server in a 30 PC manufacturing enviornment troubleshooting and administering a very small LAN and doing desktop troubleshooting.

I have no Mac experience at all and the school system runs about 65% Mac's.

Can anyone offer advice as to a quick crash course in MAC operation and troubleshooting, web-based hopefully, as well as a way to bring my PC troubleshooting skills up to date in a hurry. I need a jump start just so I'm not totally lost when I walk in the door. I know it's a tall order, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.

If anyone works in a medium sized school district enviornment I would love advice.

I was think of buying an old G3 or a Mac Mini just to get comfortable with the
GUI.

Thanks,

 

[Oyeve]

Thats good advice. Get a cheap mac and just search the web for all things mac. macs are not as easy to troubleshoot as pcs are when something goes wrong. There are tons of mac helpguides on the web. Just google em.

 

[w00t]

mac mini there is a trial going u can try one out for 30days if u dont like return and get your money back.

edit: u cant get upgrades though.

 

[chcarnage]

One good crash course can be found at Ars Technica.

Anandtech has a review of the GUI and the most common applications here.

Apple itself has a huge support section online, including a tour d'horizon called Mac 101. Now this is really a basic introduction...

Shortcuts are an easy way to interact with Macs. Some key combos like force quit or the ones executed during the boot process (since there is no visible BIOS) are important for support. A regrettably incomplete list can be found here, and you can download a PDF file here.

There are many Mac communities with active forums, Mac OS X Hints is among them. You can go there with difficult problems.

 

[Larcher]

This is known to be a good book.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de...321278488/103-3692981-4899003?v=glance