Sunday, February 24th, 2008
Even though there are no known viruses for the Mac at the moment, you never know when something could pop up and cause trouble. With that said, it is always better to be safe than sorry and if staying protected also comes at no expense, there really should be no excuse for us Mac users. If you are still without an anti-virus, get protected for free by downloading ClamXav. Let’s not forget that even though viruses don’t affect Macs, they can still be passed on from your computer to windows users. Like I said before it is absolutely free to download and it could save you and your friends with Windows a lot of headaches in the future.
Posted in Freeware, Tips/FAQs | No Comments »
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
If you have purchased music from iTunes, there is a quick and easy way to transfer it over to any other authorized Mac computer. Simply plug your iPod in, right click on it from your desktop, then select the Transfer Purchases option and follow the guided prompt. Quick and painless and now you have a backup of all your purchased songs just in case something happens to your hard drive or if you just want to have songs on another computer. While there are many applications that will do this for you (and will give your more options), none of them make the whole process as simple as this quick little tool integrated by Apple.
Posted in Tips/FAQs, iTunes | No Comments »
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
Let’s face it, stuff breaks. This applies to Macs just as well as Windows PC’s (Only difference is that you have an 80% chance of starting windows and receiving an error, the odds are much more favorable with a Mac :)).
For those of you who run into some problems with your Mac running OS X Leopard, try these quick troubleshooting steps to help resolve you issue.
1. Restart your Mac
A simple restart of your computer might resolve your issue forever. If that is the case, you are officially done troubleshooting.
2. Check to see if you are running out of space
Another fairly common and easy to fix problem. You always want to have a minimum of 3GB available on your hard drive. More is ideal and recommended if you burn cd’s/dvd’s or use resource intensive applications. Remember that swapfiles (generated from applications launched on startup) on launch will take up 2GB of space immediately!
To fix your space problem: Delete some files! Consider getting an external hard drive and upgrade your RAM if you like running a bunch of applications simultaneously as this will reduce swapfiles.
3. Repair Permissions
Open Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities Folder). Select your boot drive (Probably “Macintosh HD”). Proceed to click on the First Aid Tab and then click on Repair Permissions.
4. Create a new User Account
Go to your System Preferences >>> Accounts and create a new user account. Log out of your current account and log in to your new one. If this fixes your problem you know that the cause is your user account. At this point, some serious troubleshooting is in order. Consider taking your Mac in for repairs or if you are up to it, backup your data from your previous account to your new user account until you pinpoint what file is causing your problem.
5. Deep Clean all Caches
Try using a third party tool like Leopard Cache Cleaner to deep clean all of your caches. Reboot your system and see if that corrected the issue.
6. Startup in SafeBoot Mode
You can do this by holding your shift key during initial boot. If you do not run into your problem while in SafeBoot, you can be sure that the problem lies with Extensions or StartupItems. You can find most of these at /Library/Extensions/ and /Library/StartUpItem/. Try moving some to your desktop, starting with third party extensions, and try to pinpoint the problem. There is a possibility that the problem might be from an extension installed in /System/Library/Extension/. You probably do not want to mess with those if you do not know what you are doing since you could screw up your whole system. If you cant isolate your issue moving the /Library/Extensions/ and /Library/StartupItem/ it is probably best to take your Mac in for repair.
7. Reset your Firmware
Resetting your firmware to factory default is pretty simple. Simply hold down cmd+opt+O+F during boot up and you will be presented with open firmware. Once inside type this:
reset-nvram (hit return)
reset-all (hit return again, the system will reboot)
8. Unplug all USB and Firewire Devices
Reboot your computer with everything unplugged except for your Apple mouse. If this fixes the problem, you have a bad external drive or a bad port on your computer. Try to isolate the problem.
I hope that these tips above are useful to some people. If you need some help with any of these feel free to comment and I will try to help you out. If these do not fix your problem, post a comment describing your issue and I might just write a guide to help troubleshoot that issue. Either way, subscribe to our feed to make sure you get the latest troubleshooting guides and up to the minute product news and reviews. Thanks for reading!
Posted in Leopard, Tips/FAQs | No Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
A quick and easy way to make your large files a bit easier to e-mail is by using the built-in Compress tool. With it, creating a ZIP archive of a single file, multiple files or even complete folders is a simply a matter of a few clicks.
3 Steps to Smaller File Sizes:
1. Select everything you want compressed and right click on any of the files.
2. Scroll down to Compress “Your File Name Here” and select it.
3. Wait a few seconds and enjoy your smaller, more compact file that is ideal for e-mailing.
That’s it! You are done. You will be presented with a .zip file. Simply attach that file to your e-mails and you are well on your way! See images below if you need further help.
Right click on a file and select the “Compress (File Name)” Option.
Wait a few seconds and enjoy your new ZIP archive. In this example notice that the folder went from 1.1 MB to 676KB when ZIP archived.
Changing LINKS
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