I use a Mac OSX in my office as a graduate student. Once I graduate I won't have access to that computer. What is the easiest way for me to transfer/export all of my personal stuff from the Mac to my Dell laptop? Can external hard drives negotiate between mac and pc? Is there a cable I could just connect the two with?

ask the administrator if u can connect ur laptop to the network and access your files and copy them to the laptop they'll prolly say no does it have a cd burner just burn them 2 a cd or use a usb flash device or memory cards well hope i helped

Yes you can use a USB hard drive between the two computers. Just make sure it's formatted correctly first. And your main problem will be making sure the programs on the Dell are compatible. Windows may be fine, but if you have a brand new version of MS Office on your Mac, and an old outdated version on your Dell, it may not read things. So check your software versions...

Thank you both --
Lucid, so when you say "formatted correctly" do you mean it should be formatted for Mac since that's where I'll be copying from? Do I have to do some sort of re-formatting when I plug it into my Dell? It's an Inspiron 700m, pretty new, so I probably won't have a problem with old versions of software.. Sorry, I don't know much about these things, haha!

What u want to do is format the drive using your dell as a "Fat32". If it's formated by mac, your PC won't recognize it, and if it's formated "NTFS", your mac won't be able to write to it. Just use Fat32 and the drive will be fully accessable to both computers. (dont reformat when u plug it into ur dell or u'll loose the data on the disk)

keep on rockin' in the free world

Be warned. FAT32 does not support big files over 4GB.
If you have files over 4GB I suggest you network them
together. Networking is easy. Then copying is easy.

There are also some internet sites that let you back up to
their site.

Use the CDs, or the Network, otherwise there may be issues with file format, as PCs and Macs use different file system... Macs work on HFS+ Extended Journaled, based on Unix file system, while PCs will have Fat32 or NTFS...

CDs use a neutral file system, CDFS, so that'll be the best way..
Transferring files over the network will also work..
USB drives may not work, because the moment you connect the device to the PC, it'll want to format it in PC format(Fat32)..

Tirtha Guha

we're a multi-platform company so formatting the drive on a
Windows PC in Fat32 is the correct way to go. after that you
can connect it to any PC or mac and read and write from it.