Hi - I was just hoping someone could help me with a windows v mac problem. I've always owned pcs/notebooks with windows operating system but I am curious about MAC powerbook. I was hoping if someone could help me answer the following question: 1) I store a lot of files from my current compaq presario on an external USB hard drive. If I were to transfer these files onto say the MAC powerbook, am I likely to encounter any problems - eg incompatible file types? I'm mostly worried about the compatibility of data files especially during my transition from Windows to Mac. If anyone could help me I'd greatly appreciate it! Thank you.

Depends on what type of data files you have. MS office files (word, excel) come through without problems. adobe files from cross-platform apps (photoshop, illustrator) also come across. Programs like Quicken have ways of converting between the two platforms so you can port them as well. If your text files were created by PC programs, there can be issues with end-of-line marks (line feed, carriage return, or both) but text editors on the Mac such as BBEdit handle these transparently. If you have files created by windows programs that don't have a mac version, then the files won't do you much good on a mac anyway. Hope this helps.