For the most part, the set up wizard will direct you well to
setting up a stable and productive Mac. In general, Mac OS
provides a simplified interface for common activities, with
more advanced features 'under the hood'.
It is a Very Good Idea(tm) to a) include the first account in
the admin group; b) require log-in, choosing a solid
password; c) do _not_ activate the root [aka 'System
Administrator'] account.
Right-clicking has always been possible under Mac OS, it
simply isn't _required_ to get things done, and is
consistently accomplished by control-clicking.
Take advantage of the 'Location' feature and access the
networking through the Apple Menu>Location>Network
Preferences item. Most of your security issues can be dealt
with in the 'Sharing' control pane.
Without knowing which printer is involved, it is difficult to
say what the best way is to set it up. I would recommend
connecting the printer and trying to use the Foomatic
driver that the CUPS system recommends, but you
certainly can't go wrong following the manufacturer's
documentation.
Unlike Windows, there is no user-accessible centralized
Registry for settings: each process is responsible for its
own. This has been greatly standardized in recent times,
and for the most part nearly anything one wishes to tweak
can be done so with the 'defaults' utility at the CLI--bash
is the default. Please man defaults for more detail.
Immediately after setting up, please let the computer run
for several hours without sleeping or shutting down. In
order for the 'Spotlight' feature to work, an initial
database needs to be built up, and there have been a
handful of incidents where interrupting this has caused
problems.
The major differences between Mac OS and Windows have
to do with their respective file systems. HFS+ allows for a
number of extents--in the past this included the so-
called data and resource forks--that NTFS or FAT32 are
not aware of. This needs to be taken into consideration
when exchanging files among the several platforms.
Here's a link to a one-stop resource of news and support
issues for Mac OS:
Have fun :)
Hope this helped,
paul
