Why is my Mac running so slow? - Part Three

Welcome to Part Three of “Why is my Mac running so slow?” Previously, I wrote about the importance of having free space on your hard drive and memory installed on your Mac. This next subject will be a short one.

Keep your desktop clean.

Your desktop is actually a folder. It lives at (your startup disk, usually called “Macintosh HD”) > Users > (your user name) > Desktop. The difference is that the desktop folder displays it’s contents on your desktop as icons. These are not your normal icons, because the operating system treats every icon on the desktop as a window. So having 100 icons on your desktop is like having 100 windows open at the same time. This uses tremendous amounts of system resources and slows everything down.

It’s easy for the desktop to get out of hand. Icons on the desktop are generally laid out in a grid. When the grid fills up, the operating system starts to place any additional icons in the same place, stacking them on top of icon for your start-up disk! So now, the problem is getting worse and worse and you don’t even realize it.

The solution is easy. Start by creating a new folder on your desktop. Call it “Stuff to file”, or something like that. Then, take everything on your desktop and put it in that folder. I doesn’t matter how many items are in that folder or how much space those item take up. To the operating system, it’s just another window. Once you have done that, you should notice an immediate improvement in performance.

Next, do some house cleaning. Start moving things from the “Stuff to file” folder into the the proper folders in your home folders: Documents, Music, Pictures or Movies. Create sub-folders in those folders, if necessary. Then, just keep track of the amount of icons on your desktop. If you notice, say, more that three columns of icons, it’s time to move things to their proper places, or throw them away.

As Dr. Bobby says, “Cleanliness is next to Steveliness”.

Thanks for the read,

Your Genius

Why is my Mac running so slow? - Part Two

Welcome to Part Two of “Why is my Mac running so slow?” Previously, I wrote about the importance of having free space on your hard drive. Now, I’d like to go into another common reason for poor performance; not enough memory. In this case, I’m am talking about random access memory, or RAM, the solid-state, electronic memory your computer uses for temporary storage.

I know that for many of you the difference between RAM and hard drive space may not be entirely clear, so allow me to draw an analogy.

Imagine that your computer is like a desk, a special desk that allows you to work very quickly. The only caveat to using this desk is that, when you are done using it, you must leave nothing on the top of the desk, or else it will vanish.

Let’s say that you want to send a letter to someone. You reach into one of the desk’s drawers and put your typewriter on top. You also get a piece of paper out of the drawer to write your letter on. As you are typing, you think to yourself, “I want to send a picture along with this letter.” You get your paints out from the drawer and a canvas to go with it. Then, you really decide to go crazy and send along a recorded message, so you pull out a cassette recorder and a cassette and start talking.

When you are done, you not only have to put the typewriter, paints and tape recorder back into the drawers, you also have to put the letter, painting and tape in the drawers as well.

In this analogy the top of your desk is RAM and the drawers are your hard drive. When you start your computer, it first takes the operating system and copies it from the hard drive into memory. The same thing happens when you want to, say, write a letter. The computer “launches” (loads into memory) Microsoft Word. When you are done, you not only have to “quit” Word (purge it from memory), you have to save your new document to the hard drive.

It’s easy to see that the larger the top of your desk is, the more things you can do at once and the more efficiently you can work.

That’s why it’s important for your computer to have enough memory. Having lots of RAM allows you to have more applications running at the same time, lets you work with large documents (like big image files in Photoshop) and allows the operating system to work more

efficiently.

Here’s how to tell how much RAM you have in your computer. Go to the Apple menu in the upper left-hand corner of your screen and choose “About this Mac”. “Memory” refers to the amount of RAM installed in your Mac.

The amount of RAM required for best performance varies depending on what you use your computer for and what operating system you are running, however, 1 GB of RAM is a pretty good place to start for a modern Mac OS (10.4 - 6). The good news is that RAM is relatively inexpensive and can be installed by just about anyone. If you need more info or help with upgrading your memory, let me know.

Thanks for the read,

Your Genius

Why is my Mac running so slow? - Part One

“Why is my Mac running so slow?” This may be the most common issue that I hear from my clients, so I thought that I would lay out the reasons why this happens. Because I’d like to go into detail about each of the various reasons, I will be breaking this topic into several segments.

The first and most common reason your Mac is running slowly is that the hard drive is too full. The hard drive is the mechanical device that stores all of your Mac's information. Without it’s protective outer plate, it looks like this:

It’s not to be confused with memory, also referred to as RAM, or random access memory. Not having enough memory can also cause slow downs, but I’ll cover that in another article.

When you start your Mac, it loads it’s operating system from the hard drive into RAM. Also, when you launch an application, it, too, is loaded into memory, as well as any documents you may have created or opened. The operating system also needs to use the hard drive for temporary storage as you work. It creates what's known as virtual memory on your hard drive, accessing it constantly.

You can find out how much free space you have on your hard drive by clicking once on the icon for your hard drive to select it, then a) From the "File" menu, choose "Get Info" or b) right click on the icon and choosing "Get Info." You should see a window that looks like this:

This is the “Get Info” window for the 500GB hard drive in my MacBook. You’ll notice that the capacity is listed at 499.76 Gigabytes. The actual usable capacity of the drive will vary and will always be lower that what the manufacturer lists on the box. Just round up to the next highest round figure.

Of the 500 GB on my hard drive, about half is available. If your drive is too full, performance is affected dramatically. You need to keep at least 10% of your total hard drive space free for the operating system to use for optimal performance.

So then, what can be done to solve this?

You could start moving files off the hard drive to external storage, either to an external hard drive or to optical media (CDs or DVDs). The problem is that you will probably need to move a large amount of data to make a dent in the overcrowding. Most of the space will be taken up by, in order of size, videos, music, images and other documents. There will be very little that can come from the system folders and the applications are usually necessary and don’t take up much space anyway. So, unless you have a ton of music, movies and pictures that you don’t mind not having on your computer (and, by the way, not backed up), this is not the best solution.

The best solution is to replace the hard drive with a larger one. Fortunately, the cost of hard drive storage has fallen quite a bit. For instance, if you own a MacBook or MacBook Pro, a new 500 GB hard drive can be bought for less that $100 and can be installed fairly easily. For other Macs, replacement maybe more involved. I can replace the hard drive in a MacBook in about 5 minutes. An iBook, on the other hand, involves removing about 30 tiny screws to complete the 90-minute job.

After the new hard drive is installed, all the data needs to be transferred from the old hard drive to the new one. Data transfer can take several hours and requires a tool which will allow you to hook a bare drive up to your Mac.

As you might have guessed, hard drive replacement is one of the services I perform for my clients. For most modern Macs, hard drive replacement, including the new, 500 GB hard drive and data transfer, is only $199. Other hard drive sizes are available as well.

After the hard drive has been replaced, you will notice a marked difference in the responsiveness of your Mac. There is an added benefit as well. Remember, every hard drive will eventually fail and the older the drive is, the greater the chances of failure. So, a new hard drive will not only make your Mac faster, it will give it a new lease on it’s digital life.

Thanks for the read,

Your Genius

One to One Training at the Apple Store

As someone who makes a living traning people how to use their Apple computers, it may seem counter-intuitive to talk about Apple's One to One program. But, if you are buying a new Mac, and you want to learn use it to your fullest potential, I highly suggest it.

When you sign up for One to One at the same time that you buy a new Mac, Apple will transfer your files from your old computer, teach you all the basics in face-to-face training sessions, and guide you through more advanced projects. You can make up to one appointment per week for a year. Quite a deal for only $99.

What's the catch? You must buy One to One at the same time that you buy a new Mac. Also, you may not be able to get training on some third-party applications. And, of course, you must go to the Apple Store for training sessions.

So, if you can't get One to One because you didn't buy it when you bought your Mac, want to work at your home or office or for any other reason that One to One doesn't work for you, you know who to call.