Wednesday, November 24, 2010

About Macs: Mac Stuffing or, How to Free Up Space

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From Tom Nelson, your Guide to Macs
This week in the U.S., we're getting ready to spend time with friends and family. Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, we'll share good food, enjoy conversation, and be thankful for a chance to gather with those who are dear to us.

Once the feasting is done, the conversation drifts to a variety of topics, from football to...Macs. Well, at least in our house. One topic is bound to be how to use an SSD (Solid State Drive) as a startup drive. Since you won't be here to take part in the conversation, we've posted the good stuff on About: Macs.

Best wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving to you and yours!


Move Your Home Folder to a New Location
Your home folder is always located on the startup drive, the same one that houses the OS. This may not be an ideal location for your home folder, however. Storing the home folder on another drive may be a much better choice, especially if you have purchased one of the new iMacs with an SSD (Solid State Drive) option, or want to increase the performance of your current Mac by installing an SSD to serve as your startup drive. Because SSDs are quite expensive, most individuals buy smaller drives, in the range of 60 GB to 128 GB in size.

Of course, with a smaller drive, you've got to focus more on managing drive space. A great way to free up space is to move your home folder to another drive... Read more


Translucent Dock Icons
Hiding active applications is a nice trick for keeping your desktop uncluttered as you work with multiple applications. But once you have a few application windows hidden, it can be tough figuring out which applications are hidden, and which ones are merely covered by another window or have been collapsed to the Dock. Fortunately, there's an easy Terminal trick that allows the Dock to use a translucent icon to display any application that has been hidden... Read more

How to Perform a Clean Install of Snow Leopard OS X 10.6
It's been a little over a year since Apple released Snow Leopard. One of the most popular articles here at About: Macs is how to install Snow Leopard using the "Erase and Install" method.

The "Erase and Install" method lets you start with a clean slate, by using a new drive, or by erasing the contents of your current startup drive. Either way, "Erase and Install" lets you do a complete install of Snow Leopard. And with the holiday season upon us, a $29 Snow Leopard upgrade makes a great gift... Read more


Mac Notebook Gift Guide
Mac notebooks are the most popular computer that Apple produces. This popularity makes them a great gift for the holiday season. Everyone will love one of the many MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air models available.

If you're thinking about wrapping up a MacBook for the holidays, whether for someone else or for yourself, take a look at our guide to Mac notebooks... Read more


 


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More from About.com

Thanksgiving Recipes
Herb-roasted turkey with cornbread stuffing, cranberry relish and roasted squash, sweet and tart fruit pies, and many more. More>



Choose the Perfect Gift
Whether you're looking for teens, teachers, grandparents or even pets, we have suggestions to make shopping easier. More>




This newsletter is written by:
Tom Nelson
Macs Guide
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