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Macs at FIS
by Dave Mulkey, Oberursel Germany, 2010

Introduction
FIS (Frankfurt International School) has an extensive computer network with hundreds of PCs, dozens of printers, many servers and free wireless service for students and faculty. Students are encouraged to use computers for many school assignments - writing essays, doing research, creating presentations, publishing their work online, etc.

Over the past couple years the number of students bringing laptops to school has increased substantially. Many of these laptops are Apple Mac machines. So we have a relatively new situation that many students want/need to use a Mac computer at school, connected to our network. Since the network was designed for PCs rather than Macs, there are occasional problems when using a Mac at FIS.

These notes are intended to solve some of the common problems that Mac users encounter at FIS. They include recommendations for compatible software, helpful web-sites, and techniques that should make things easier and promote success for Mac users.

Software
The following table shows standard PC software that is used at FIS, with similar compatible software that shoud work on a Mac. It may be possible to use other software and transfer documents successfully, but the suggestions below are chosen to make the transfer as straightforward as possible. All the suggested software can be downloaded free of charge, or is included as standard software on Mac laptops.

The suggestions have been researched and tested. Some suggestions are result from obscure technical issues. If you'd like more information about the reasons for these suggestions, please contact Dave_Mulkey@fis.edu (room 329). //with LINKS for free downloads// || //**Comments**// ||
 * //**PC Software at FIS**// || //**Compatible Mac Software**//
 * //Word-Processing (writing essays)//

MS Word 2003 Open Office 3. || Use [|Open Office] - or - save essays as .RTF files to ensure compatibility with many word-processors. But .RTF is missing features like footnotes and drawings. || Mac versions and later PC versions of MS Word may have some compatibiity problems. MS Works, installed for free on many PCs, has big compatibility problems vs MS Word. Saving as "Word 97/2000" instead of DOCX will improve compatibility. ||