Speeding Up Any Mac Using Only Common Sense Part 3 of 7

Top Tricks to Speed Up Your Mac #5

Clean Up your Browser. We usually spend a lot of time online and guess what...? Your browser keeps track of all of it. That can be a big list of junk for Safari or Firefox to remember. How often do you go to your history anyway. With “tabs” enabled, very recent history is almost redundant, so let’s purge it. Under History in Safari, go to the bottom and click Clear History.

Still poky? Look under Safari and click Empty Cache. Don't click Reset Safari or you'll lose everything you've saved. use that only as a last resort...

Speeding Up Any Mac Using Only Common Sense Part 2 of 7

Top Tricks to Speed Up Your Mac: #6

Get a Larger Hard Drive. When your hard drive reaches 90% capacity you’ll notice a slow down in performance on all levels. The operating system uses hard drive space for a good number of temp files. Many applications require hard drive space to do their thing. If you don’t want to upgrade the internal drive at least consider an external hard drive. Once attached, you can off-load files you don’t use often, especially images like your digital camera pics.

Many older macs, especially the iBooks, Powerbooks and even the MacBook Pros came with really skimpy hard drives for capacity! Installing a new hard drive in one of these requires professional skills, so contact me before you make a choice. I can do the switch.

Speeding Up Any Mac Using Only Common Sense Part 1 of 7

With the economy in a downturn people are holding on to their macs longer and squeezing some more life out of them, avoiding a payout of over $1200 for a new machine. Apple macbooks even go for more. So how can you squeeze a longer life span out of an aging mac?
Obviously the concern is speed. Most people, unless forced to replace their mac due to hardware failure, feel their currant machine is too slow. So let’s cover some simple and/or cheap tricks to pep of that machine till it’s time to fork over the big bucks for a new one.

Top Tricks to Speed Up Your Mac: #7

Clear the Clutter off your desktop. Does your desktop look like the picture above? This is like coming home from the grocery store and leaving all your groceries on the floor. Leaving files on your desktop is a great way to bog down your operating system.
File your documents away. Neatness pays off and so does a clean desktop...