A few OS X questions from a n00b (well, sorta :D)

Hi all! So I finally got myself an iMac 21.5" with the ATI 4670 HD graphics card and the 1TB 7200rpm drive, after I experienced some flickering on my original one with the lower-end NVIDIA 9400M.

I'm not saying that it is that particular graphics card's fault, but I found a few other things, such as the see-through "glass" effect that I did not see when I had the iMac with the NVIDIA card. Is it possible that the ATI card makes additional effects possible, or, for that matter, causes the screen to have more vibrant colors, better contrast, black levels, color accuracy, etc., than does the NVIDIA card, or does that depend entirely on the hardware, i.e. the screen itself?

Secondly, do I really not need any type of anti-virus and/or anti-malware software at all? I'm just so used to it. On my Windows 7 machine, I also ran "NoScript", which is a script-blocking extension in Firefox. I decided not to install it on Firefox for OS X just yet, because it can be annoying to have to constantly approve individual sites that NoScript considers potentially unsafe. Any kind of malware written for Windows can obviously not be executed in OS X, right? And what about the firewall? I chuckled when I found that by default, it is turned off! Again, I'm used to Windows warning me of Armageddon even when I'm only allowing its firewall to let a program through. lol...

I also need to be able to play any kind of video and audio formats, and so far, VideoLAN's VLC player is doing a fine job with everything I've thrown at it. Under Windows, I installed a bunch of codecs which made Windows Media Player able to render almost any content. Is there such a thing for QuickTime? Is there another 3rd party media player that I might want to try? What do you guys use?

As for backups, I tried using Time Machine, but it will only work if I partition my drive or use a different drive altogether, is that right? I have no problem with partitioning this enormous drive, but I run BootCamp for Windows 7, which works unbelievably well, by the way. I was stunned to find Windows 7 64-bit-specific drivers for all hardware components on the Mac OS X Install disc. However, when I partitioned the drive for Windows 7, and then later partitioned the drive for a 2nd time (and a 3rd partition), BootCamp no longer worked. When I re-consolidated the 3rd partition that I had made for Time Machine, BootCamp worked again. I'm trying to avoid having to buy and attach an external (USB) hard drive. Any ideas?

Speaking of drives, I have been using SSD's for the past year and a half. Being that the iMac is an all-in-one unit, I suppose I can't add a second drive, except an external one. I'm so used to the extreme speeds of my SSD. It's not as big a deal as I thought, however, as OS X boots up almost as fast on the 7200rpm hard drive as Windows 7 does on an SSD. Any thoughts on a scenario where I could make use of my SSD?

Finally, what kind of programs and utilities do you guys recommend that I get. Some must-have's, you know? Any other tips and tricks would also be highly appreciated.

Sorry for the long post. So far, I am super happy with this iMac and with OS X. It's great to be part of the Mac community!

Thanks everyone!

Thanks for the very warm welcome!

@Mr. Me: Perian's great, and it pretty much works like the K-Lite codec packs that are typically used in Windows environments for this purpose. I went through the list of formats, and it plays everything that I need now, and then some. Is there an advantage to playing particular formats in QT vs. VLC, as far as quality is concerned?

@1337_5L4Xx0R: Nice app list. Firefox is my fav as well. I recently started using the "Firefox Sync" add-on, which can save you a lot of time and hassle when you need your Firefox on another computer. It syncs your bookmarks, passwords, history, settings, and even tabs to the "cloud". It's a Mozilla extension, so I didn't mind having my passwords floating around on their servers. It took all of 10 seconds after installing FF on my iMac to feel right at home with every last tweak that I had configured on my old computer in place. Just FYI. Maybe this is useful info for you or someone else.

As for the SSD, wow, do you really think that someone at the Apple Store might open this baby up for me? That would be awesome. As you might imagine, going from an SSD back to a HDD is quite a leap...backwards. I have the X-18M from Intel, which is the 1.8" version of the better-known 2.5" X-25M variant. The reason as to why this would be such a big deal for me is because I'm used to having two drives in my laptop, and as I don't ever use optical drives, I always had a 2nd hard drive installed instead of a Bluray/DVD/CD drive. So if I get the good folks at Apple to open this baby up for me, would I be able to have both the (tiny 1.8") SSD and the 1TB hard drive installed inside of the iMac, or just one or the other? I'm going to guess no, as I don't think that there is another SATA controller in there. Hmm...Like I said, I really don't need the SuperDrive that comes with the iMac, but as I'm typing this, you're probably going to tell me to get a Mac Pro and customize it to death, right? haha...Add to that the fact that there are likely going to be warranty issues that nobody at the Apple store will want to be responsible for. What do you think? I know it's a long shot, but I had to try. I would still rather have the one drive that's inside be an SSD and hook up the big drive externally. Hey, that would solve my Time Machine issue at the same time.

@Rocket: Agreed on the stationary part. As I said above, I'm used to having at least two hard drives (one SSD and one HDD as of late) in my laptop, and that's how I used to back up my primary drive. The speed of the 2nd hard drive never mattered much, since I had the OS and all of my applications installed on the SSD, and the 2nd drive was a 500GB 5,400rpm drive that was mainly there for storage and for having a lot of my files easily accessible.

Does anyone have any advice as to which storage solution might be best suitable here? I really only need an empty bay that can house 2.5" hard drives, as I have plenty of those.

Thanks again, guys! Awesome advice. I really appreciate it.

Crunch