Increasing speed?

[munson]

I was wondering if there were any tricks that I could so to maybe increase the performance of my Mac without downloading third-party software. I saw a thread about defragmenting it, and I know that having a lot of files/folders on the desktop can slow it down, but is there anything else?

IF there isn't anything else that does not require third-party software, what did you do/what program, and how much did it help?

 

[Tallest Skil]

OS X defrags itself. Get some RAM and keep around 10 GB on your HDD open and you'll be fine.

 

[munson]

OS X defrags itself. Get some RAM and keep around 10 GB on your HDD open and you'll be fine.

Yeah, just ordered 4GB of RAM from Newegg.com. 😀 Thanks, I wasn't sure if there was anything else I could do to boost my performance a little.

 

[Amdahl]

OS X defrags itself. Get some RAM and keep around 10 GB on your HDD open and you'll be fine.

Vista defrags itself. OS X does only a half-job.

 

[kolax]

and I know that having a lot of files/folders on the desktop can slow it down, but is there anything else?

On state of the art computers that we have now-a-days?

 

[munson]

On state of the art computers that we have now-a-days?

Well, I am not completely positive, but, it is an eyesore as well. So, if not to help the speed at which I can compute, at least it will be pretty. 😀

 

[clevin]

Yeah, just ordered 4GB of RAM from Newegg.com. 😀 Thanks, I wasn't sure if there was anything else I could do to boost my performance a little.

sigh, just in another thread talking with a guy who said leopard is happy with 1G and Tiger runs smooth on 256MB. lol

RAM is the key, as long as CPU isn't slow.

OSX doesn't defrag itself, it only use disk in a way that doesn't produce many fragments. But when your free HDD space getting smaller, fragment will be there. This might be why with OSX you need some amount of free disk pace to run nicely.

 

[kolax]

RAM is the key, as long as CPU isn't slow.

Depends what you are doing though - RAM is key if you are doing a lot of things at once, or using a professional app that is going to suck up a lot of RAM.

For the average user who just browses the internet, office applications and other little applications, getting more RAM isn't going to help speed things up.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

sigh, just in another thread talking with a guy who said leopard is happy with 1G and Tiger runs smooth on 256MB. lol

Clevin, have you even tried to run Tiger on 256MB of RAM? It is smooth. Sure you can't do a lot, but just running OSX is still pretty smooth.