Maintaining an iMac G5?

[mauly]

Have had my iMac G5 now for a week all is great!!!

I'm just wondering if you guy's have any tips on maintaining a mac - for example: clearing all unwanted stuff thats been cought while on the net.. I now that my ex-pc went slow cos of this, is this still a problem for my mac.. Do we have to defrag!! etc etc

Are there any onboard tests I can use, to find if all is well? or not!!

Any tips (in general) are welcome - or a link to a past thread (i did look)

 

[Daveway]

Well there are no virus' and spyware, but will still need to clear your cache. OS X automatically defrags for you.
Maintainance would include repairing permissions. Applications>utilities>disk utility>repair permissions.

 

[James Philp]

Unless you notice something there's no need to tinker.
OS X defrags all files under a certain size (i think it's under - might be over..)
Either way, you'll be fine.
Run a permissions repair every so often (after/before installations is good) from the Apps>Utilities>Disk Utility app.
Leave your computer on now and again, OS X runs janitor apps during the night to keep things running like silk.
Most people get by by this alone, no problems.

 

[mklos]

I like to run MacJanitor as well. This runs the UNIX maintenance scripts. This is all OS X based. It deletes the log files among other things. If you leave your Mac on 24/7 you won't need to use this utility.

Here is a link to the program:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10491

 

[Etrain]

If you leave your Mac on at night but in sleep mode will it still maintain itself?

 

[mklos]

I do not believe it will. When its in sleep mode everything is not currently working. It would have to be on and awake in order for it to to the maintenance in the middle of the night. There is a way to change the time it does the maintenance scripts in the Terminal, but I can't remember how to do it off hand.

 

[Platform]

If you leave your Mac on at night but in sleep mode will it still maintain itself?

I think it is only the RAM that has power then to keep everything as it was on wake-up

 

[Maxiseller]

Thats right.

Mac OS X seems to be to be virtually free of "tasks to do" to keep it ticking over. In fact, after switching from Windows, one of the things that I thought was an oversight on Apple's part was not to include to utilities such as defrag and scandisk!

Shows you what effect a windows world has on you!

Just get an application that does it for you. Somthing like Onyx or some of the others that people mention here will do the job. It takes only about 5 minutes to delete things like log files, and internet cache. Nothing big.