Mac Must Knows

Dashboard is great. Tons of cool widgets that let you do almost anything.

But having all these widgets does affect your computer.

Each widget needs a bit of memory to run. Some more then others.

Certain widgets need so much space they will slow down your computer. The ones that keep updating to show new info are probably the worst.

Don't feel like you can't have these widgets. I use them, they're great.

But if you want to give your computer a little boost just open dashboard and remove the widgets you don't need/use. Doing this will help take some strain off your computer.

If you don't use dashboard, why not disable it? This too will save you some energy.

The easiest way to disable dashboard is with Onyx. It's under: Parameters ---> Expose and Dashboard.

If you don't want to download Onyx you can turn it off with Terminal... it's more technical but you can do it.

This guide will tell you how to do it: http://www.macworld.com/article/46236/2005/08/disabledashboard.html

Good Luck!

Removing unnecessary code saves disk space and speeds up your computer.

Most applications are made to run on Intel and PPC computers. This means there programmed to run for 2 different configurations. But nobody has both, they either have one or the other.

So why keep configurations for something you don't have?

Well now you don't need to. Programs like Xslimmer remove the unnecessary code, leaving you with only what you need.

This makes the application run faster and also saves you disk space.

Unfortunately removing unnecessary code is the one thing that you need to pay a bit of money for.

Xslimmer is not free. It costs 12.95.

I'd say it's worth it because it does more then just remove unused code. It will also get rid of language packs you don't use (another thing to save space).

You can learn more about Xslimmer here.

"10 Ways To Speed Up Your Mac": Clean Useless Startup Items

When you log on to your computer, it has a few programs that it loads as soon as it starts.

The more it has to load, the longer it will take to load. You can cut down the load time by removing some of these startup items.

To do this go to:

System Preferences --> Accounts --> (Click the account you want to clean) --> Login Items

There you can find a list of Applications that launch at the start.

Look through them to see which ones you don't need.

When you find one you want to remove click it to highlight it and click the minus button.

Do this with all the accounts you want. This will make your computer start and run faster!