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Abdesai

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2003
21
0
What applications do you guys recommend to optimize system performance. Is Norton still any good? Also, what are some applications that turn off the eye candy that slows down the system? I have 10.3.4.
Thanks
 

PlaceofDis

macrumors Core
Jan 6, 2004
19,241
6
you can turn most of the "eye candy" off in system prefs, such as the dock magnification and application bouncing, what exactly are you looking to turn off? and there is not much system optimization that you have to do to maintain OS X you can use Disk Utility to repair permissions and you might want to downlaod something like onyX that can run the cron jobs for you...
 

Sparky's

macrumors 6502a
Feb 11, 2004
871
0
Since the advent of OS X, as far as I'm concerned, Norton is OUT!! :D
Leave your Mac running 24/7 for a few days and allow the OS (with journaling on) to sort itself out. From what I understand the OS has a built in "optimizer" that runs at about 3:00 am (part of the system utilities that run in the background) just leave the puter on over the weekend and see if it runs ant better on Monday ;)

Since I'm involved with Folding @Home I leave my Mac on 24/7 all the time, and for the last 6 months have had no problems with any files or bad prefs or anything for that matter.

But if you're one that likes to play around then look into "TechTool Pro" v4.x
 

Horrortaxi

macrumors 68020
Jul 6, 2003
2,240
0
Los Angeles
There isn't much to do, and I certainly wouldn't advise regular use of 3rd party utilities. Save your money until you need Disk Warrior--but that day will probably never come. I'd advise strongly against anything called Norton on OS X. They all might as well be named "Norton System Destroyer X."

Unix has utilities that run in the middle of the night (Unix being designed for computers that never get turned off). If you leave your Mac on overnight (every night) they'll get run. Otherwise you can run them manally from the command line. You can also get free utilities like Cocktail or MacJanitor to run them on command. Permissions is another Unix feature that needs tending too sometimes. Open Disk Utility and select your hard drive, then 'repair permissions'. There's no set interval for when to do this. I do it weekly, others do it monthly. It's all good.

Personally, I paid $9 for an app called Macaroni, which reschedules the cron jobs for when the computer is running (but I'm not using it), repairs permissions at a set time, and removes localized files. So now all my housekeeping is automated.

Here's how I look at it--Apple thinks of everything yet they didn't include a lot of disk utilities. That tells me you don't need them, and experience has shown that to be the case.
 
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