[help] how to speed up mac without voiding warrenty or spending money

[steelfist]

hello. i wanted to create a thread that is simaler to the common ones of pc users.

there are literally millions of pages, and threads, and talk about speeding up windows xp. there are useless processes that can removed and killed in task manager, you can disable services, you can speed up boot time, and you can do all that without voiding a single warrenty or spending a penny.

i know that macs don't really need to deal with that "crap" but i feel that macs have a lot of potential for registry tweeking and the such.

to give you an idea of what i mean by speeding up without voiding warrenty or spending a penny check out these examples for pcs.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1590
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1681
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1494

so. i would like some feedback and cool tweeks and tips on speeding up our macs!

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

Quit Dashboard. Stop Classic. Uhh... Yeah. OS X is just fast though.

 

[eva01]

add RAM

 

[Chundles]

Hmm, speed it up without spending any money....

You could try dropping it?

 

[combatcolin]

Buy more RAM.

 

[FF_productions]

what are the specs of your mac?

 

[Lucky8]

Quit Dashboard. Stop Classic. Uhh... Yeah. OS X is just fast though.

When I control click on the Dashboard icon, it does not give me a quit option.
How do I quit Dashboard?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Buy more RAM.

More RAM is good...

But to be needlessly pedantic... Additional RAM doesn't really speed a machine up, it removes barriers to speed caused by having too little RAM. It's like saying: Not stepping on the brake pedal makes your car go faster.

When your application and data load exceeds the amount of physical RAM, the OS starts swapping memory out to the hard drive, which is much slower. If you have enough RAM, then it doesn't have to page out and the machine can run at full speed. Adding more RAM above the "enough" level will have little if any speed benefit.

Of course, then you start running more programs simultaneously and opening more data and raise the "enough" bar, eventually until you exceed the physical RAM and the cycle repeats...

 

[greatdevourer]

Tinkertool - turn off dashboard amongst other things
Shadow Killer - turn off some of the cool effects in X. It speeds up slower machines loads, but it just looks weird
Disk Utility (already there, in the utils folder) - Run "repair disk permissions" once a week on your boot disk
OnyX - word.

 

[Flowbee]

i know that macs don't really need to deal with that "crap" but i feel that macs have a lot of potential for registry tweeking and the such.

Now if I could only find my Mac's registry...

 

[spinne1]

Google is always your best place to start any search. Try searching for:

speed up os x

in Google's search box and have fun speeding 'er up.

 

[stridey]

When I control click on the Dashboard icon, it does not give me a quit option.
How do I quit Dashboard?

As greatdevourer said, Tinkertool can turn off Dashboard. If you're looking for a fast way to kill dashboard, open Terminal and type

killall Dock

which will restart the dock (Dashboard is actually part of the dock). Dashboard will effectively be off, until you call it up next.

 

[yojitani]

FYI there is no OSX registry (thankfully). If your mac seems a little sluggish, you might try repairing permissions or running a program like Onyx. That usualy does the trick. Also, you might check your processor settings, if your computer allows it (on my PMG5 I can). If you're running something like photoshop or FCP and your processor is set to 'automatic' you might notice a little change in speed.