Mac Maintenance Question :::
 

I was wondering if you guys have any tips & tricks for keeping a Mac running in tip-top condition? I read that DiskWarrior was a great program to use for regular maintenance. Any of you use this on your Macs?

I've been wondering this as well. My FireFox is starting to load slower and slower these days. Is there a temp folder or something like that that needs cleared out? I don't want to remove all my cookies/passwords and such.

mac FF users should give Safari 4 beta a try. I <3 Firefox, but recently started using the new Safari beta and I'm really liking it. Loads really fast.

why would you use firefox on a mac is my question...

I used it for about 1 page then went right back to safari ...

you want your mac running good.. restart it 3 times...

I rarley restart mine...

they run flawless... it only seems slower because when you get them they are so much faster than any PC on the market then after you use it for a while it seems not as fast as it was

kind of like driving a race car.. at first it's fast as fuck.. then come your 12th race it's just a race... even though your still doing 180mph....


mac = greatness

pc = garbage....

In Preferences->Privacy, click on Settings for Private Data and check the "Cache" button. ...
firefox will store a mega cache, but I clear mine at the end of each session and it's spick and spam after a year of play (and 120GB of accumulated data on the hard disk)

Same for Safari - Safari menu->Empty Cache

Stay the hell away from DW and all those disk defragmenting tools - they will cause you much much pain in the long run. Trust me - unless they sorted shit out major league, I used them from OS X 10.0 to 10.2 and then gave up. Never had a pb since.
If you're worried about fragmentation, the best most sure way is to "Clone" your disk to a firewaire drive (note, clone, not copy - try CarbonCopyCloner), reboot from FW drive, then clone back. No more fragmentation. Not that I've found that an issue now that OS X uses a Journaled filesystem (check in disk utilities that Journalling is turned on for your disk btw)

Go through you Library/Cache and delete any unwanted crap
Same with Library/Preferences - this is the one that will hog things I think. Drag everything to the desktop and re-login to see, then drag essential stuff back in. Each time you open an app, you'll create a Library/Pref for it if it doesn't exist.

you really don't need maintenance for a Mac. Mines is on 24/7. I restart it once every two weeks, or when the software needs to be updated. If you have a MacBook, calibrate the battery every three months or so.

it's just the PC in them over thinking the mac... they will realize that they are going to overthink the mac more times before they get used to how great they really are

My macs have been running fine for years without any maintenance at all.

Just stay away from the /System and /Library folders (unless you know what you're doing) and don't install any strange or untrusted apps.

You can Verify permissions and repair your disks using the Disk utility under apps - utilities..

I never run any maintenance on any of my computers except for regular backups.

When it starts to get slow I format. :)

Clear the app cache and repair the permissions, it will fix the slow down on the leopard and tiger. If it still slow let me know and I'll send you a software to clear it up :)

calibrate the battery?

I keep all my files and whatnot on an NAS drive as well as a backup image of a fresh install with all my Apps installed and ready to go.

Every other month or so, I just reformat and copy the backup image to my drive.

Good as new.

I've been using macs since they came out, no reason to worry about "maintenance" and all these disk tools end up causing more harm then they are worth.

It's good to have a copy of disk warrior as a boot up DVD in case you have a drive crash to try and recover, but don't use it otherwise.

If you are an advanced user, use "OnyX" (check versiontracker.com) to clean out some OS cache's and run some other nifty things to customize some settings, but I went for years without using anything and never had problems. I started using it cause I keep having a problem building preview icons in finder cause of some permission deal that keeps happening.

Try to keep a lot of free disk space on the hard drive. The more that is used up the more fragmented it will become and the slower your system will become.

On my Mac at home I use Spring Clean -- and my Mac runs very nicely.

yeah, run till it drains. let it sit for at least 5 hours. then let it fully charge. they say it keeps the battery in tiptop shape. do this every two to three months.

after doing this my battery capacity did increase.

just installed this after seeing it in MacUser. Loving the opening window with all your favourite pages in it... stuff loads fast... I like it :thumbsup