Mac Must Knows

Something about Mac OSX is that, the more free space you have on your hard drive, the faster your computer runs.

Cleaning out your hard drive is a great way to speed things up.

Go through your folders and look for things to delete. Stuff like...

• Movies you don't watch.
• Music you don't listen to.
• Files you no longer need.
• Pictures you don't really need (Things off the internet).
• Applications you no longer use.
• Duplicate Files.

And so on...

There are a few programs that can help you do this. They can tell you where the most space is being taken, what duplicate files you have and other things to help you clean things up.

I'll go over them in a different post.

The more free space you have the better.

Did you know that you can run Leopard in tons of different languages? And not only leopard, most of your applications probably have a few language translations.

All this language support takes up space though. And more then a few megabytes. Getting rid of the language files you don't need could easily scrape 5gb off your hard drive.

So how do you choose the ones you want and get rid of the ones you need?

It can be done with a program called "Monolingual". It let's you choose the language files you want to use and get rid of the ones you don't.

Start by opening it up.

In the languages section check all the languages you aren't going to use and uncheck the ones you will.

Next simply click remove and your done!

You'll be amazed at how much space this saves.

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.

Mac is prepared to fit all possible needs. It has settings to help people with problems hearing and seeing, settings to share internet, settings to share files.

This is all great, but not everyone needs it and it slows your computer down.

To see what's turned on open your system preferences.

What we will be checking is:

• Universal Access

• Speech Recognition

• Bluetooth

• Internet Sharing

Universal Access is for people who have impaired vision and/or hearing. So naturally if your hearing and sight is fine, you don't need it. To turn it off open system preferences and click "Universal Access". Just quickly go through and check it's all set to off.

Speech Recognition let's you tell the computer to preform certain tasks using the mic. I personally never use it because a mouse and keyboard do the job. If you don't want it on click "Speech" in the preferences and turn it off.

Bluetooth can be used to connect things wirelessly that are close by. This could be a mouse, a keyboard or even your cell. If you use anything that requires bluetooth, leave it on. If not you can turn it off. This can be done as always through the system preferences under "Bluetooth".

Internet Sharing is very handy for expanding your wireless network. It let's other people near your computer connect to the internet wirelessly. In some situations this may be very useful, but if your not using it your just slowing down your computer. To turn it off go to the preferences and uncheck it in the sharing section.

So there you have it, four services you can turn off to make your computer run a little bit faster.