Wired has an “How to Wiki”. This one is an article about recovering speed on a Mac.
One of the first things it says is “keep in mind that none of these tips will change your aging G4 iMac into an Intel Quad-core speed machine.”
The article starts out with a list of steps:
* 1 Take Stock of Your Hardware
* 2 Recover Hard Disk space
* 3 Speed Up Slow Applications
* 4 General System Tips
* 5 Things that Won’t Help No Matter What the ‘Pros’ in Forums Tell You
Take Stock of Your Hardware
Under this category they talk about getting a larger hard drive and putting in more RAM. Hardly a surprise.
They also recommend a consult of your user manual or a trusted supplier to make sure you’re buying the right parts for the job.
Also suggested is the idea of running Software Update.
Recover Hard Disk space
I once had a client that asked me to come over and see why he couldn’t print. Turned out he had 1K of space left on the drive. As a rule, you should have over 10% of your hard drive available for programs to allow the swapping of hard drive space for RAM.
1. Take a hard look at your applications folder. Anything there you can delete? I know that I have TONS of shareware and open source files I have downloaded to produce disks for the user group. I don’t always get them cleaned off my drive.
2. Delete unused language packs. You probably aren’t using the Farsi language localizations on your machine. The freeware app Monolingual makes this easier.
3. Know what you’re storing. “Where’s The Free Space” will provide a graphical overview of what is using space on your drive.
Speed Up Slow Applications
Safari, Dashboard and Firefox are often culprits.
Universal binaries also take up more space and effort from the CPU than non Universal applications.
General System Tips
Clean Out Your Startup Items
Clean Up Your Desktop
Get rid of any corrupt fonts.
There is more and of course, there are links to the files mentioned
So check it out here.
