recent switcher - need some general suggestions

[raiderz182]

hi i just switched to mac about 2 months ago. I bought a 12inch powerbook 1ghz
at first it ran super fast really smooth, but lately its been going very slow
i just wanted to ask all of you mac pros out there, how do you guys keep your mac running at top speed?
are there things that im supposed to do periodically like defragging or something?? Please tell me what you guys do and what i can do to fix my speed problems.

[mactastic]

Well from looking at your sig, the first thing I would suggest is a trip to Crucial (www.crucial.com) to up your RAM beyond the 256 that is the bare minimum recommended by Apple. (However I have heard of people with only 128Mb running OSX, but it can't be much fun.) Get your PB up to at least 512Mb. That will help with the 'feel' of your machine being faster. Beyond that, let your computer run the cron scripts that repair your machine late at night while you are sleeping, and maybe possibly get a copy of DiskWarrior to help maintain directory structure over time.

[slipper]

yeah, get more ram from a reputable manufacturer like crucial. (i tried generic and it messed up my ibook)

and if you switch off your mac at night, download macjanitor so you can manually perform some cleanup tasks.

[alset]

Also wouldn't hurt to run fsck. Hold down command-S at startup to boot into Single-User mode. Type "fsck -y" (without quotes) and hit Return. After fsck runs, type "reboot" and hit Return to boot back into the Finder.

You can find a plethora of great tips at http://www.macosxhints.com/ . Browsing the archives will yield many Unix and Finder tips for maintenance, optimization, and customizing your Mac.

Dan

Oh, and I agree about the RAM. Buy as much as you can afford. 256MBs, while technically adequate, is not much.

[snickelfritz]

I never shut down my Powermac, and I repair permissions at least once a week.
I reboot it before doing any demanding video editing or DTP projects.
The speed has been very consistent.

[mklos]

I also agree on the RAM thing...get as much as you can afford. Mac OS X just like XP loves lots of RAM(although OS X doesn't eat it as much as XP does!).

BTW...if you upgraded to Mac OS X.3.2 then this is where you may be experiencing some slow downs, especially in boot up times. There have been lots of reports of the OS X.3.2 upgrade slowing down both the iBook and the PowerBook G3/G4. My iBook (Dual USB Series) boot up times are fairly slow compared Mac OS X.3 or even OS X.3.1. My 1 GHz FP iMac seems a little slower, but not as much as my iBook.

Macs generally don't need to be de-fragmented so I don't think your problem is there. Especially if its fairly new. Just make sure you repair the permissions every once in a while.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Originally posted by mactastic
Well from looking at your sig, the first thing I would suggest is a trip to Crucial (www.crucial.com) to up your RAM beyond the 256 that is the bare minimum recommended by Apple. (However I have heard of people with only 128Mb running OSX, but it can't be much fun.) Get your PB up to at least 512Mb. That will help with the 'feel' of your machine being faster. Beyond that, let your computer run the cron scripts that repair your machine late at night while you are sleeping, and maybe possibly get a copy of DiskWarrior to help maintain directory structure over time. Hey mactastic what are cron scripts? i new that it would do a slight rebuild if you left it on at night but can you give more info on whats going on when you leave the mac on all night. Never have seen much information on this aspect of the mac

[mactastic]

Well, I have a limited understanding of this area but 'cron' is a UNIX utility that allows scheduling of various scripts. Apple apparently uses the cron 'process' (in UNIX-speak) to run several self-healing utilities.

Go to your terminal and type 'man cron' without quotes to get a better idea of how to use it.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Thanks, i guess you can tell the computer to do this rather then just leave it on all night as i have done sometimes.

[mactastic]

Here, I dug this up pretty quick, so it's not comprehensive or anything.

Link (http://www.macworld.com/2003/12/secrets/handson/)

OS X comes with three Unix maintenance scripts -- daily, weekly, and monthly -- which you see in the default system crontab. These scripts are already scheduled to run on a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule, respectively. However, because of a long Unix history we won't get into, the default times (the daily script runs at 3:15 a.m.; the weekly, at 4:15 a.m. on Saturday; and the monthly, on the first day of each month at 5:30 a.m.) mean that the scripts will never run for Mac users who shut down their Macs or put them to sleep at night.
If you don't have a Unix background, the cron utility is most likely foreign to you. However, it's one of the simplest and most useful Unix utilities you'll find in OS X. Cron runs in the background whenever your Mac is on. Every minute, it checks schedules called crontabs to see whether any command or script is supposed to run. If so, it runs them. If not, it takes a nap for 60 seconds, then checks again, and so on.


Anything you can do via a Terminal command, Unix shell script, or Mac OS AppleScript, you can run via cron at a specific day, date, and time. (The step-by-step section of this column provides you with a couple of good examples.) You can even perform simple actions such as launching an application or opening a document (using the Terminal command open).

[Awimoway]

I agree that you really need more RAM.

Also, docklings and third-party menu bar extras can really slow things down. Keep these to a bare minimum.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Mactastic you Dah Man! thanks again. this is something iam sure a lot of Mac users Dont know. great info

[bubbamac]

Yep. What they said. Get more RAM, probably a 512MB chip, since I'll bet you've got a single 256 installed, with one open slot.

Keep the extra stuff to a minimum.

Go get MacJanitor, it's free. Google it, or look on versiontracker.com.

Repair permissions once in a while.

Have fun! Welcome to common-sense computing.

[raiderz182]

gee... thanks a lot guys im gonna try all that stuff now