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Thursday, July 26, 2012

Speed Up Slow Mountain Lion | Improve Mountain Lion Performance

How to improve Mac OS X Mountain Lion slow startup ? Fix slow Mountain Lion performance with few easy tips. These are some common questions being asked by users of Mac OS X 10.8.

Tune Up and optimize Mac OS X Performance with RAM

The more you offer RAM to Mac OS X, the better it will perform. Instead of buying a new Mac, adding RAM is the best way to improve Mac OS X performance. Usually while upgrading OS X we forget to upgrade the RAM according to its requirement.

 

Create ample of free space on startup disk

Mac OS X keeps using Virtual Memory (VM) extensively. It means that the OS uses free disk space on your startup disk, or say boot volume. If the startup disk doesn't have enough amount of free space then the performance can degrade considerably.

So, the users who have recently switched from Lion to Mountain Lion (From Mac OS X 10.7 to Mac OS X 10.8) should keep it in mind that the RAM requirement for both Lion and Mountain Lion is 2GB but still the Mountain Lion needs more full fledged Mountain lion performance.
To regain free space on drive you can use Mac drive cleaner to get rid of useless stuffs line cache, duplicate files, system junks, large files and log files.

 

Some tips to boost Mountain Lion speed

Although some features look very fascinating but this entertainment has a performance cost. You can gain some speed by avoiding the eye candy.
  • User should keep the Dock less entertaining
    1. Open System Preferences > Dock.
    2. Select Scale Effect in the Minimize Using field.
    3. Deselect the Animate Opening Applications option.
  • The window effects should be disabled
  • Animated desktop background because while entertaining, it steals cycles from other processes and consume necessary resources which can affect the performance while running some heavy application.
  • iTunes Visuals running in the background can consume your processor cycles and slow down OS performance.
  • Close those dashboard widgets which are not needed since they consume both real and virtual memory.
  • In Mac OS X 10.5 and later, the Activity monitor doesn't list the individual widget but the DashboardClient process is the only indication that Dashboard is running.
  • You can reclaim these resources by closing nonessential widgets. Follow these steps and close widget:
    1. Open Dashboard.
    2. Press and hold the Option key.
    3. Move the mouse pointer over a widget you wish to close. The widget's Close button (X) appears in the upper-left corner of the widget.
    4. Click the widget's Close button.
    5. Repeat steps 3-4 for other widgets you wish to close.
Repairing Permissions after installing new software avoids the possibility that an installer may have reset permissions on system-related files or folders.

 

Disable or remove unnecessary fonts

Loading hundreds or thousands of fonts by default can significantly degrade Mac OS X performance. This is especially true if you use Font Book to install fonts and have not adjusted its preferences: by default, Font Book automatically enables newly-installed fonts.

We hope the above tips would help you to regain your Mac Speed

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

How to Optimize Mac drive | Clean up Mac Drive to Speed Up

How can I optimize my Mac OS X Lion to speed up Mac performance? Can cleaning up Mac drive help to speed it up ? Here we are going to find solutions to these questions.

 

Clean Up Mac

Yes, its true that cleaning your Mac both physically and logically can help you to revive it. Starting with harware of your system, first, turn it off, unplug all connections, and bring it out of its set up. Clean the dust and any smudges or oils that may be lingering on your screen. For this, one can use a lint-free cloth, but even a dry microfiber cloth can also get the job done. 

Cleaning the Mac drive is done via some clutter cleaners like Stellar Speed Up Mac. This tool helps you to optimize your Mac and enhance its performance. Its important to mention here that the OS needs more memory for multiprocessing. The need if fulfilled by using space on hard drive temporarily. So, its recommended to maintain free space using some cleanup tools.

Keep your Mac updated

Make sure you have updated the patches, security alerts, and installed applications via Software Update. If you're at on old version of Mac OS like Leopard or Snow Leopard then its the right time to upgrade your Mac OS X to Lion. Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" is going to release this month.

Uninstall Unnecessary Apps to Reclaim Hard Drive Space

Optimize Mac drive with digging into your Applications folder and segregate the important programs from unnecessary ones. Uninstalling a Mac application is as simple as dragging the app to the trash, but it doesn't remove the app permanently and leave orphaned preferences files of those uninstalled programs. These useless files and many other clutters can be cleared completely using Mac drive cleaner like Stellar Speed Up Mac. It gives you an estimated drive space, you will gain after removing all unnecessary stuffs.

Need Some Maintenance and Optimization

Now, its the time to optimize the drive using Disk Utility and "Verify Disk." It shouldn't take too long, and if there found any error, get it corrected with "Repair Disk." This task can repeated after every few months to avoid any creeping issue with your hard drive. You should also take care of verifying or repairing disk permissions. 

Beyond Disk Utility , you can also use some system optimization tools like Drivetoolbox. Another module of this pack offers you to defrag your drive. Its recommended to defrag the drive to make read/write operation faster by sychronizing the data.

Macs usually don't need too much of maintenance, but the above discussed tips can definitely make it lighter , especially after heavy use. Its true that Apple doesn't ship too much for tweaking or optimization tools for your Mac, but there are plenty of available for all versions of Mac OS to give tune-up to your ailing Mac.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Slow Mac Lion – Reason to switch from Mac Lion to Mountain Lion

Why to switch from Mac OS X 10.7 to Mountain Lion ? When I ask this question to a home user, the simply blame the slow performance of Mac Lion and consider it the major reason.

In new days, Mac Lion OS X 10.7 performs at its best but, with time, it gets sluggish like any other OS and start running slow and having performance related issues. In my opinion, few technical tips could help you get out of this vicious circle of slow Mac. Here are the few:

Close Mac programs properly – In Windows applications stop once closed. But, it may not be the case with Mac. The application may keep running in background even when you hit CROSS (X).

Remove logs and caches - The unnecessary stuffs like logs, caches, duplicate files consume a lot of space on your drive. User need to delete these files to gain free space. It is important to note that while running some application, the OS may also use space on hard drive. So, its recommended to have enough free space (to be used by OS) to speed up performance.

Limit the number of startup items – When our machine starts, there also start some applications automatically with it. These are called startup items. The more the number of login items, the more they will consume the resource. Thus, limiting the number of items and keeping only important ones would help you.

If the above tips help you to speed up your Mac Lion then there is hardly any reason to switch to Mountain Lion (Switching is recommended for the sake of new features of Mac OS X 10.8).

Friday, July 13, 2012

How Can I Speed Up my Older Mac running very Slow | Add Speed to Mac


How Can I speed up my old Mac ? Give me some tips to add speed to my Mac ? Tips to improve improve my Mac speed startup speed of my Mac.
Make your Mac fast
Slow speed of Mac is a common problem for users running old Mac machines. They often search for tips to remove sluggish behaviour of Mac. The solutions include everything from few basic Finder tweaks to maintenance utilities which can fix the issue. Here we are discussing some of them.

Disable the Finder thumbnails – These images take resources to render and display. If we disable them, it can give a nice performance boost in Finder:
    • Open Finder window -> View -> View Options -> uncheck “Show Icon Preview”
Disable Item Info if you don't need in Finder – Collecting and showing information about items takes resources to do so. Disabling it, could save efforts increase speed.
  • Open Finder window -> View -> View Options -> uncheck “Show Item Info”
Reduce number of Login Items – It speeds up boot process by availing all thresorces to OS . Also it improves performance of applications when launched. A general rule of thumb is simply disable the thing if you are not using it.
  • Go to system preferences ->Accounts ->Login Items. Remove the items you don't need.
Your disk needs free space at least 5% of total disk space – Its important to note that your drive must have have alteast sufficient free space on the hard drive so that it can be used by OS to run multiple applications or heavy programs. This is an excellent attempt to improve performance of slow older Mac.

Clear Files and Folders and make desktop clean – The users should use the home folders and directories to keep their data rather than simply dumping on desktop. It frees some useful memory and thus avail resources for processor.

Use a fast Browser – Most of the Mac users like using Safari and the update version this application is capable enough serve you at its best. It is also suggested to limit the number of tabs and windows you have open, and disable or remove the plugins that are not needed.

Remove permanently or quit applications which are not required – Almost everyone of us does the mistake of leaving apps open that not currently being used. The newer Macs can handle the situation with quick drives and plenty of RAM but, older and slower Macs go sluggish when a handful of apps are running at a time.

How about reinstalling Mac OS X – Although this is not convenient, but formatting and reinstalling Mac OS X can make remarkable improvement in Mac speed because it forces you to start from scratch with no lingering cache, preference files, custom settings, nothing. If you possess a very old Mac from 2006 or 2007 then a fresh reinstall is strongly recommended.

Keeping Mac free from unnecessary files, useless cache and unimportant resource consuming applications, you can opt for some third party tools and gain free space on drive. Follow the above tips and enjoy fast Mac.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

How to clone Mac OS X | Copy Mac OS X | Clone Running Mac OS X Lion


Best Cloning Application for Mac OS X

How can I clone my Mac OS X? Is it possible to copy Mac OS X currently running on my Machine? The answer is YES ! There are many ways to create exact copy of Mac OS X, but Stellar Drive Clone is considered as the best application for cloning Mac. Its an easy to use, cost effective, and reliable tool to create backup of your machine.

Features
  • Creates an exact replica of your source drive to destination drive
  • Creates a bootable backup for your boot drive
  • Easy way to migrate files from source disk to another
  • Supports both block-level and file level cloning
  • Store your backup to external drive, same drive or to a network drive
  • Able to create image of your drive restore from the same
  • Very simple and user friendly interface with explanatory notes

Bright area of Stellar Drive Clone

Cloning a source disk to destination network drive, creating a disk image and restoring from a backup, or a network share. It offers you an option either to clone a volume or an entire drive. The best part of this cloning application is that you can clone the running Mac OS X on another drive without interrupting your work. Secondly, in while cloning Mac Lion, it can create copy of recovery HD in Mac Lion.

Where it Falls short

Till now this cloning tool doesn't offer an incremental backup. This drawback is going to be removed in coming version to be released very soon. Except this, there is no other grey area in this Mac cloning tool.

System Requirements :
  • Processor: Intel, PowerPC (G3 or later)
  • Operating System: Mac OS X Lion 10.7,
    OS X 10.6, OS X 10.5, OS X 10.4 and OS X 10.3.
  • Memory: 256 MB RAM
  • Hard Disk: 25 MB of free space
User Guide for Stellar Drive Clone

Alternate disk cloning tool

Disk Utility- Its an inbuilt utility for Mac OS X and is an excellent option for cloning a drive. While it copies file-by-file, rather than block-by-block, but can't clone the boot drive you booted from. Its a free but not an easy to use application.

Friday, July 6, 2012

How to boost Mac Speed | Techniques for Faster Mac

How can I use easy tips to speed up my slow Mac Lion? Tell me some easy methods to make my Mac fast and roomy as new one. Advanced but easy to implement techniques for faster Mac. 

Most of us would have definitely found ourselves struggling with spinning beachball and now, is the time to take steps to get rid of slow Mac. So, you can think to buy a new Mac. But, is that the only way to solve the issue? Definitely not. Although new is loved but there are other methods as well to speed up your Mac and regain free space in drive. 

Here we are going to discuss causes of most Mac slowdowns and finally some tools for gaining free space by clearing hard drive clutter.

Which files and folders are consuming more spaces up your Mac drive
There is difference between memory and hard drive space. Memory (RAM), is used by OS temporarily for storing applications when it is run. Whereas the hard drive is the space where apps and files (including music, photos and videos) are stored.

Usually Most Macs have space which looks enough to store all the user's data. But, with the passage of time, this space goes vanished, particularly when we put your Mac to heavy use.

The same way your Machine's memory may also run out if you are playing too many applications at a time. In such cases, your Mac uses its hard drive space (temporarily) for additional memory via a swap file. So, user should always keep at least some free space on drive.

Some applications need to create temporary files while they're running, which they delete later. These temporary files can either be of few KB (like with MS Word) or few GBs (like in Apple iDVD or Roxio Toast).

Reclaim space on hard drive for a faster Mac
You can regain drive space either by deleting or moving them to other accessible resource like disk. You can burn CDs and DVDs with data you still want but don't need on your hard drive. Its important to note that burning DVD library can be a time taking process so, a quicker alternative is an external hard drive.

It was all about creating free space by moving files on some other media. Knowingly or unknowingly, we create too many unnecessary files, duplicate files, store cache and install unnecessary applications on our machines. These stuffs consume too space on drive and need to be removed from our Mac machine.

Time for Stellar SpeedUp Mac
The task of cleaning Mac drive can be accomplished mannualy but not perfectly. Another option is Stellar SpeedUp Mac, which is a Mac cleaning application. It can make your free from unnecessary files and applications. A user can perform the task at any instant or schedule it with set preferences.

Instead of removing the entire (not usually used) application, user can choose to gain space by simply removing its other language files and make the program monolingual.

Advanced techniques to give your Mac a speed boost
So you've cleaned up your Mac's drive, increased memory, removed unwanted programs and files. But, still not not getting the expected result. So, what else can you do?

Reformat Mac drive
The simplest thing you can do is to reformat Mac hard drive and reinstall all your applications, and restore your data from backup resource. This is to decrease the level of fragmentation of files which occurs with modifications and saving the changes. This attempt to defragmentation could help to decrease the file accessing time by OS and thus boosts Mac speed.

Visit here for more Tips to Boost Mac performance