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Should the firewall on my Mac be turned on or off?
- Thread starter jusacruiser
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Read the last two words in my last post and click the link. That will show you how to post pics
![Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 16.10.01.png]( "Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 16.10.01.png")
![Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 16.09.19.png]( "Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 16.09.19.png")
![Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 16.10.14.png]( "Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 16.10.14.png")
and this is one from earlier on that i took just using just the activity monitor and the finder window,.!!
![Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 13.26.46.png]( "Screen Shot 2012-03-12 at 13.26.46.png")
and this is one from earlier on that i took just using just the activity monitor and the finder window,.!!
There's nothing out of the ordinary in those screen shots, as far as memory or CPU usage. You still have plenty of RAM available, so there's no cause for concern.
its gotten worse since then ,. and I'm still only using the safari, activity monitor and iPhoto ,.. stopped using the secure trash and deleted most the screen shots ages ago ,.. and when its JUST the activity monitor and finder ,. its using 3.88 GB :-0 if i was to go for 16 GB , as i was advised to never go with un even numbers on the connections ,.. who would you recommend ,... ?
and thanks so far ,. learning loads
its gotten worse since then ,. and I'm still only using the safari, activity monitor and iPhoto ,.. stopped using the secure trash and deleted most the screen shots ages ago ,.. and when its JUST the activity monitor and finder ,. its using 3.88 GB :-0 if i was to go for 16 GB , as i was advised to never go with un even numbers on the connections ,.. who would you recommend ,... ?
You don't need more RAM. To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
between restarts ??,.. would shut downs count !! or is it just what happens between two complete turn offs??
thank you ,. the helps been great ,.. and i think you just saved me a few hundred euro
Should the firewall on my Mac be turned on or off? And why?
Thanks!
If your router is properly configured then a mac based fire wall would have no purpose.
A fire wall's only job is to filter network packets. If those packets never make it to the computer then a fire wall has nothing to do.
Notice the number of times the work "if" is used above.
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If the OS is doing it's job it will find a way to use ALL the RAM you give it. If you double the RAM in your computer then I'd expect Mac OS to use almost double the RAM it uses now. This is a Good Thing.
The system will try to put any "extra" RAM to use as a disk buffer or to cache parts of some application. Don't worry, Mac OS has a virtual memory system that tries hard to keep the information you are most likely to need in RAM so as to minimize the amount which must be read off the disk drive.
This is one reason the adding more RAM makes the system faster, because it allows for a larger buffer or cache.
It's fine to have them both on, and it won't slow anything down. It's good to have your Mac's firewall on, so if you travel and connect to another network, you know you have firewall protection, regardless of the network's router.