All posts tagged maintenance

8 Steps for better osx performance

Posted by on June 21, 2012

Annoyed with slow performance from your Mac? No need to worry much because there are several ways that you can boost your Mac’s performance without even having to open your wallet. Below are proven and effective ways to improve the performance of your slow Mac.

1. Remove unwanted login items.

If you’re not using some files and applications in your startup menu then it’s best to remove them. You can check out what is in your login items by simply going to System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items. Doing this will cut some lag in your Mac computer especially when you startup.

2. Disable other items at the System Preferences.

If you have other preference panes that you no longer need or use then better remove them too. This is true even with Universal Access features that use up some RAM resources. If you don’t need this very often then it’s better to disable it in the System Preferences options. Other options that you can disable are Internet Sharing, Speech Recognition and Bluetooth.

3. Mac comes with pre-installed languages that are unnecessary.

If you want to free up a lot of space on your hard drive space then it’s a good idea to remove some of them. A helpful tool that can do this quickly is Monolingual.

4. Clear out other useless junk.

Over time your Mac’s hard drive will get full of files and applications. Determine the ones that are important to keep and clean out the rest of them. If you delete any unneeded or unnecessary apps and files then your Mac’s hard drive will have more free space and as a result your Mac will now load faster.

5. Perform some maintenance tasks on your Mac.

Most of the reasons why Mac slows down is because of cache files that are taken for granted. Better run some maintenance applications such as MacCleaning, MainMenu and Onyx to help you clear out these cache files and even repair some disk permissions.

6. Keep only useful widgets on your Mac.

Even if Dashboard is hidden, the widgets can still consume a lot of your RAM space. Better empty the ones that are less important to you, because doing so will surely improve and help your Mac to perform better. You can also use tools such as TinkerTool or Onyx to delete them.

7. Periodically check out the Activity Monitor.

This is located in the Utilities folder. You can run this monitor to help you determine which of the applications and files are sucking up the most RAM. Then you can decide which ones are not needed and deactivate them, which will help your Mac’s performance.

8. Power up your Mac.

If you want to optimize your Mac performance then you can go to System Preferences>Energy Saver then Options. Set the processor performance to the Highest option if you want to see some improvements in your Mac machine.

If you got a Mac that’s slow, just remember the simple steps above and it will be easier on your part to boost your Mac’s performance; all without the need for you to even spend money.

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How To Do Mac OS X Routine Maintenance

Posted by on April 25, 2012


If you are anything like me, when you got your first Mac, routine maintenance on it was a mystery. Once you get the hang

of Mac, you will see that you do not have to become frustrated and that it is actually very easy to maintain your Mac.


There are several reasons why your Mac maybeexperiencing maintenance problems. The amount of RAM you have maybe the problem. Upgrading and getting more RAM could be a good idea. But, if you are just an average Mac user like me, then routine maintenance should be the key.

Mac Routine Maintenance, Done Right!

OS X has a built in maintenance routine that is does on a daily basis. This is called maintenance scripts. This is usually done between 3:00 am and 5:00 am. If your Mac is either turned off or in sleep mode, this routine maintenance never happens. If you are running 10.5 or later then your Mac will run this the next time it is available after sleep mode is off. If this has not been ran in a while then your Mac’s hard drive can fill up with files and slow down your Mac.

Another routine maintenance you should do on your Mac is to clear caches. If a maintenance script was run, only some of the temporary files were deleted but none of the systems caches are touched. Deleting your system caches and Internet caches will help enhance your systems performance. To empty your Internet caches, you will simply go to your Safari browser, then press Safari and th

en press empty caches.

Doing a file system check and repair disk is another task you should do on your Mac occasionally. This is run through a process that will report anything that is wrong with your Mac and then automatically repair it. To run a system check you will want to restart your Mac and press down the shift key right after the startup chime is played. You will want to press the shift key until the spinning bar cursor appears on the screen. Your Mac will reboot into “Safe Boot”. Here your Mac will report any errors and then repair them. Then you will restart your Mac normally. This process can take awhile, but is well worth it in the end.

One of the easiest ways to do speed up your Mac when doing routine maintenance is to clear your desktop. It is common for Mac users to gather different folders and applications to their desktop for easy access. This is also when Mac users start to noticing that their Mac’s are starting to run a bit slow. To fix this problem, you can create a folder and place these items in the folder. You will then just have one folder on your desktop. You can also drag the folder to your dock. This will give you easy access to the files and applications and keep your desktop clean
ed up.

Mac Routine Maintenance Is Easy

Routine maintenance on a Mac may seem complicated at first to a new user. Cleaning up your desktop, clearing caches and understanding maintenance scripts is just a few ways to keep your Mac running smoothly. Once you have learned a few tips and tricks on your Mac, doing routine maintenance will only take a few minutes if done regularly.

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Clean Up Mac Hard Drive: Boosting your Mac

Posted by on April 10, 2011

As you will notice over time, your Mac becomes slower unlike the first time you used it. If this happens this is the right time to clean up Mac hard drive. So get started doing it. But before you perform cleaning routines to your Mac make sure to backup all important documents in the hard drive to other external devices because you might end up having clean hard drive but looking for all your piece of files all over again.

Looking for the things that keeping your Mac slow: The first thing that you can do is to launch the Activity Monitor at the Applications then click Utilities. It will show you a list of applications and other processes that is happening in your CPU and memory. Look for the applications that are hogging most of the CPU time. If there are applications that you don’t need take note of it and if there are applications that are taking long to run then quit it and restart the Mac for an immediate solution.

Clean up the Startup list: Look for applications that are found in the startup menu and what these that you don’t need are. Just click the System Preferences, then Accounts and the Login Items tab. There are a list of applications and select the minus tab for apps that you don’t need anymore.

Uninstall unnecessary files and all its related files: Go over to your Application folder and remove apps that you don’t need anymore. Just a thought, in doing this might not speed up your Mac but eventually will reclaim hard drive space. But before you drag and drop applications to the trash, it is advisable to use third party uninstaller programs where it can completely remove applications and all its associated files. You can choose from AppTrap, AppDelete, AppZapper, MacKeeper and a lot more.

Do some routine maintenance: What’s good about Mac is that you can perform routine maintenance without the need for any extra software. Just run the Disk Utility that is found under the Applications then Utilities. This will verify and repair the disk permissions. This can take a longer process so better do it when the system is idle. But you can choose other third part software that can already perform detailed maintenance to your Mac.

Reclaim hard drive space: While you are performing cleaning procedure to your Mac, determine first what really is taking up all the Mac space. There are other utilities that allow you to view your hard disk and all the unnecessary files that are stored on it. You can even defrag your Mac hard drive to reorganize all your files and bring back the Mac performance on top shape.

If you intend to clean up Mac hard drive, there are a lot of possible steps that you can do about it from removing unnecessary applications to running other routine maintenance tasks. You can also use other third party applications that will make the process a lot easier but before you do so always back up your important files and folders.

 

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Cleaning Your Mac’s Hard Drive with Mac Cleaner

Posted by on March 23, 2011

For Mac users who are using their computers more often hard drive space can easily be consumed. This is sometimes loaded with videos, music, applications and other files that will end up filling your hard drive. But with Mac cleaner application it can help a lot in recovering the hard drive space.

Over time system performance of any computer slows down. This is quite true if Mac users constantly update their security, replace operating systems that often lead to file fragmentation and end up cluttered hard disk. You can resolve this problem by using some of these recommended Mac cleaner tool for your system.

iDefrag: It defrags and optimizes Mac’s file system. It is quite simpler to use and capable of doing the following:

Defragment individual files: Choose the files that you want to defragment without the need of disturbing the rest of the hard disk.

Don’t need bootable CD/DVD: It doesn’t require CD or DVD all you need to do is click Go and the application will reboot the computer and change it to a mode where it defrags the files.

Improve system performance: It tweaks the performance of your Mac through defragmentation.

Improve user interface: It reduces cluttered disk space and improve the accessibility of the application.

WhatSize: It measures the size of folders and files that are taking up the hard drive space. It is then sorted according to size. It shows a chart display the will show you all the contents of the hard drive and how much space is being consumed each of these files. It will suggest you how to recover some disk space by cleaning out the unnecessary files. And one more thing it identifies duplicate files and suggest ways how to remove it.

MacJanitor: It controls the Mac OS X maintenance scripts that clean up System logs and other unnecessary files. It comes as a freeware and can be used periodically for Mac users who constantly use their computers. It can run maintenance tasks with a simple click form the button. Users can even schedule their preferred time when they want to run the maintenance schedule.

Monolingual: It removes unnecessary language packs in Mac OS X in order to reclaim more hard disk space. It runs on Mac OS X 10.5 versions, Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac OS X 10.4 versions.

You can do a lot to improve and clean your Mac system in order to enhance its speed and reclaim more hard drive space. You can achieve this with the help of Mac cleaner tools that are already widely available today. These cleaning tools comes with different features some can defrag your files, clean up your cluttered files, uninstall applications completely and protect your system from privacy breach. All of these aim to make your hard drive cleaner and improve speed performance too. Look over to the different features that these Mac cleaner applications are capable of and decide which of these works best on your Mac system.

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Mac Cleaner For your Mac

Posted by on March 15, 2011

Which One is the Best?

Using Mac Cleaner in your Mac system makes everything quite easy from moving files, backing them up and cleaning the whole system from errors and threats. All you need to do is select from the available Mac cleaner applications that suits your needs and will provide you better results for improving your Mac system’s performance.

MacKeeper: This is from ZeoBIT. It acts as 911 for MacKeeper where it can manage the routine tasks making Mac secured, reliable, fast and clean. This application is simple but its advanced and powerful features cannot be just undermined. Even Mac users as beginners can use this easier and it is even more flexible to technical experts. MacKeeper can handle lost data and files, protect system against breaches and other computer related issues. The application consists of Clean-up utilities – Binaries Cutter, Cache Cleaner, Logs Cleaner, Duplicates Finder, Languages Cutter, and Old Files Finder; Standalone tools – Backup, Data Encryptor, Default Apps, Disk Usage, Login Items, Shredder, Undelete, and Wise Uninstaller; Online services – Anti-Theft and Geek on Demand.

Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner: This is from Northern Softworks. A general purpose application also that works on Mac OS X. It also performs system maintenance in an easy and simple click form the interface. Even experts and novice can appreciate using this application for their Mac system. More personal PC users and even businesses use this. It provides full automation on its maintenance tasks such as virus scanning, repairing permissions after software installation and a lot more. Another thing that this application is good at is that it can improve system’s performance by cleaning cache files, tuning the cache and internet settings and implementing RAM disks as well. It uses powerful tools for optimizing the memory and files in the system thus recovering used memory space and gets rid of localization of file and sliming binaries.

AppCleaner: This is from Free Mac Soft. It uninstall applications, looks for other files associated with that application and delete them quickly and completely. The new version of this application has new and improved search engine, added German, Swedish and Polish localization and an easily fix bugs too.

Autodesk Cleaner: This is from Autodesk. It already supported 60 media formats and designed specially for Mac OS X. You can now edit some video with the highest quality and aside from that it is compatible with Quicktime 7.1.3. It can even encode in AVI and MPEG-2 formats. The newer versions are already packed with new capabilities for improving your other video files.

When it comes to Mac cleaner, most of these applications are catching up in the list. There are a lot more applications to choose from and these are just one of the best recommended tools for your Mac system. All of these are capable of cleaning all the bugs and threats in your Mac while improving the speed and performance on the process. Although Mac is already built with some clean up utilities but it is far better with the features offered by these applications because Mac utilities have some limitations too. So what are you waiting for? Look over on these applications and choose one that will work on your Mac.

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