The Internet has greatly simplified communication between Macs and PCs. Macintosh and PC users can now exchange files, communicate and play games over the Internet in perfect harmony.
Communicating by email
Mac OS X includes an email application called Mail, which offers rich text, easy setup and advanced filtering tools, as well as an Address Book. You can also use Eudora, Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Entourage, which is included with Microsoft Office 2004. Webmail systems such as Hotmail, AOL Mail and Yahoo! Mail work perfectly on a Mac, too. And because modern programs exchange information via the Internet standard MIME, email passes smoothly from Mac to PC and back again.
Two hints for sending attachments from a Mac to a PC:
- Add the appropriate PC extension after the name of the file sent (.doc or .xls, for example)
- When sending compressed files, make sure you state how they were compressed so that the addressee can download StuffIt for PC (or a similar product) to open them.
From a PC to a Mac there is no issue, as Mac OS X includes StuffIt Expander, which can decompress the popular Zip PC format.
