Cleaning and Uninstalling items on Mac

[MimiMONSTER]

At the risk of sounding like an idiot …

How do you clean the computer? How do you uninstall? I have had my IMAC G4 since early 2002... right now I am ordering tiger.. but at this moment am still running on 10.1.5

It has been running kinda slow lately… kinda like a PC does when it needs to be defragged… or cleaned… I empty the recycle bin and clear the history and cash from Netscape and explorer… I also cleared 34 gigs (I still have a good amount of ram)
Is this all I can do? And as far as uninstalling do I just delete programs?

Sorry I must be the biggest moron to post on here, huh?

 

[eva01]

yes just delete, and also if you run a program like Mac Janitor or Onyx that does maintenace thingies. Also repairing permissions and repairing disk

 

[MimiMONSTER]

thanks for replying so quickly... I kinda feel bad about asking about uninstalling now that I found other threads with the answer... but definately thanks for the cleaning info... the computer is definately running slowly...

 

[jsw]

As someone who had similar problems with an older iMac (same year, but shipped with Jaguar), I highly recommend backing up your important data and files and then just installing Tiger from scratch - Erase and Install.

I got away with upgrading Jaguar to Panther, then Panther to Tiger, along with all the incremental updates and fixes and patches, etc... but, after three years, a lot of plaque had accumulated in the iMac's little G4 arteries. So... I blew it all out with a fresh install and put back the programs and data I actually use, and it runs MUCH better now.

Best of luck!

 

[Dreadnought]

A lot of programs make a pref file in your library, which you probably haven't cleaned yet, altough you deleted the programs. That makes your mac go slower. You can do an archive and install, you put a new os on it and the old one is still on your mac, you can delete that manually. All your prefs are gone then. Also when putting a new os on it, with the installation click on special installation and click all the printer drivers and foreign languages out. this saves about 2 GB disk space and your mac doesn't have to load it with startup. Also leave your mac on at night time. It then cleanes up after itself. Or you can get an app like cocktail or macjanitor to these kinds of clean ups and set your parameter back to normal. They do make a difference!