ANTenna Blog -- Apple

Many Windows users have trouble making the transition to the Macintosh, and often, it's for superficial GUI reasons. For example, one Windows XP user I know was very frustrated because the way you resize windows on the Mac (pull the lower-right corner) is more "limited" than the way you do it on Windows (move any side or corner). This was enough to make him lobby to go back to Windows, believe it or not.

Even everyday tasks, like setting up a printer or changing Microsoft Word preferences, can be a block to people who only know one way to do a specific task.

Fortunately, a solid book from O'Reilly can help ease the transition frustration, and I'm happy to recommend it.

"Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Leopard Edition," by David Pogue, is a must-buy book for any employees encountering the Mac for the first time. (If you're an all-Mac shop, that would apply to new hires who came from a Windows environment.) The books are cheap enough that you should just issue a copy to every employee making the transition.

This book could be helpful for your IT staff as well, since it talks about how to do things like transfer messages from Outlook and Eudora for Windows, and migrate users from Windows-only applications like ACT, Microsoft Publisher, Visio, Norton Utilities, WinZip, and so-on. It also helps with frequent issues that new Mac users have trouble grasping, like the Mac's built-in ability to create PDF files.

"Switching" has a lot of overlap with David's other book, "Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual," which is also recommended as a reference. Most existing Mac users won't need this book, but if you have a lending library at your office, you should have one copy of this book there. By all means, don't buy both books for the same people. The core information Pogue provides is largely the same in both books, but in "Switching" it's presented with the added Windows context.