Wednesday, May 25, 2011

About Macs: 2011 iMacs, Performance Tuneups & Troubleshooting

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From Tom Nelson, your Guide to Macs
The new processors and new graphics in the 2011 iMacs make them a nice upgrade choice for many Mac users, as well as a pretty good desktop Mac for first-time Mac buyers. If you're thinking about springing for a new iMac, check out our 2011 iMac buying guide, and our reviews of the new models.

If you're feeling a bit of new Mac envy, the rest of the newsletter may be made just for you. You'll find a collection of performance tips that will have your Mac purring, and troubleshooting tips for common Mac issues.


What You Should Know Before You Buy a 2011 iMac
Are you in the market for one of the new 2011 iMacs? I've been looking at them myself, and I have to say, I like most of the new features of the 27-inch models. I also like the fact that the new processor options are all quad-core goodies.

The new iMacs also have better AMD graphics than the previous generation, and new super-fast Thunderbolt I/O capabilities. If you're interested in the new 2011 iMacs, take a look at our new buying guide. It includes information about what features are available, and what you should look for and look out for. You'll also find links to our reviews of the 21.5-inch and 27-inch 2011 iMacs... Read more


Remove Duplicate Applications From the 'Open With' Menu
The 'Open With' menu lets you open documents using a different application than the one associated with the document type. For instance, you may wish to open a JPEG image with Photoshop rather than Apple's Preview. You can easily do this by right-clicking the document (in our example, a JPEG image), and selecting 'Open With' from the pop-up menu. This is my favorite method for quickly opening documents in other applications. The 'Open With' menu will display all of the applications you have on your Mac that are capable of working with the selected document.

One drawback of the 'Open With' menu is that, over time, it can get very long, as you install and remove applications on your Mac. It can also start to display duplicates of applications. For instance, my 'Open With' menu displays four entries for Photoshop even though I only have one version of Photoshop on my Mac.

This little maintenance trick will not only get rid of duplicates, it will also make opening the "Open With" menu much faster... Read more

See More About:  using terminal  using finder 

Mac Performance Tips: Keep Plenty of Free Disk Space
OS X's memory management system uses lots of virtual memory. Since virtual memory is actually space on your startup drive, having a startup drive that is almost full is sure to degrade your Mac's performance.

There are other concerns related to a nearly-full startup drive, besides the obvious lack of space for new applications or documents. Almost all applications use some type of temporary file while you're running them. If there isn't enough disk space to create the file, an application may crash or fail to start up. OS X also needs disk space to run many of its routine maintenance chores. If there's too little space, some of these important housekeeping tasks may be delayed or never run... Read more


Speed Up Safari With These Performance Tuning Tips
Safari is my web browser of choice; I use it every day for research, work, and games (mostly for work, of course). Safari gets quite a workout from me every day, and while it generally does its job well, over time, I've noticed that its performance can show signs of degrading.

These tuneup tips can affect performance to varying degrees, from mild to major, depending on the version of Safari you're using. Over time, Apple modified some of the routines in Safari to optimize performance. As a result, some tuneup techniques can, for example, create huge performance increases in Safari 4, but only modest increases in Safari 5... Read more

See More About:  using safari  performance tips 

 


Macs Ads
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Mac Performance Tips: Remove Login Items You Don't Need
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Create a Spare User Account to Assist in Troubleshooting

 

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This newsletter is written by:
Tom Nelson
Macs Guide
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