PowerBook Central: Speed Up Your Mac! 30 Tips.

Last spring we listed 26 tips for speeding up your Mac in addition to One Reader's Reply to those secrets. It's been almost a year since those tips were posted, so we thought that now would be a good time to revisit some of them.

2. In the memory control panel, set the disk cache to about 1500k if you've got at least 48MB of RAM. I've got 64MB and have it set to 1538k. If you have very little RAM, then set the disk cache to whatever you can spare. If you have lots of RAM, don't bother setting it to more than about 2000k - you won't see much more improvement after 2000k. Figure 32k per megabyte of RAM up to about 2000k.

3. Pare down your system folder. Get rid of any control panels, extensions, control strip items, preferences, fonts, and sounds you don't need - or at least disable them. Make your system folder as lean as possible. The leaner your system folder, the faster it'll run, and the less memory it'll use.

4. Use the latest version of Speed Doubler. Some people will disagree on this one, but if you've got an older Power Mac, you should notice a distinct difference. On my G3-upgraded PowerBook 1400, it's quite noticeable. Startup Doubler can reduce your startup time anywhere from a couple of seconds to almost a minute.

5. Turn off virtual memory. However, if you have limited RAM, use RAM Doubler 8 to provide file mapping. Otherwise you're applications will use more RAM.

6. In MacOS 8.0+, use desktop patterns instead of desktop pictures. Desktop pictures take longer to redraw.

7. Use a RAM disk for your browser's cache. Cache loads much faster from RAM than it does from your hard drive. If you can afford the RAM, set your RAM disk to about 5MB. Some people report good results with Connectix's Surf Express, especially if you have a slower modem connection to your ISP.

8. Buy a faster hard drive. I recently replaced the 1.0GB drive on my PowerBook 1400 with a 3.2GB Mobilstor drive from MCE PowerBook Products, and wow, what a difference. The 3.2GB drive is about 3 to 4 times faster than the old drive, and the difference is very noticeable.

9. Is your existing drive nearly full? Remove some of the junk on your drive. A hard drive that's nearly full will not perform as quickly as one with less stuff. Since the new Macs have such big hard drives, this tip is generally for older Macs with smaller drives.

10. Defragment your hard drive. Norton Utilities, Tech Tool Pro, or Disk Express can do this for you.

11. Update your hard disk driver. Installing a newer Mac OS will do this for your automatically.

12. Use MacOS 8.5.1. This is the fastest OS yet, and it's also the most stable. The only crashes I've had the past several months have been due to third party extensions - not the system software. For non-PowerPC machines, you may get the best performance out of System 7.5 or 7.1.

13. If you have extra to spare, increase the amount of memory allocated to each application. With Netscape, Word, Photoshop, and other memory-intensive applications, increasing their memory allocation will boost performance.

14. Try setting your display(s) to a lower resolution and/or number of colors. The more colors or higher resolution, the longer it'll take for the page to redraw. Should you be using a fancy external monitor, make sure you have the latest video driver. However, as reader Pim Blokland points out, "...some programs function the best at 256 colors. Decreasing the number of colors to beneath 256 slows them down, just as sure as increasing to 65536 or more."

15. Buy more L2 cache. Now, this tip isn't for us PowerBook users, unfortunately, because we can't upgrade our L2 cache. But if you have an upgradeable desktop system, 1MB L2 cache is running pretty cheap these days.

16. Use Conflict Catcher and make sure you don't have any extensions or control panels that have 68K code, these will slow down any PowerPC based machine. Upgrade to the latest version of the extension or control panel.

17. Get Motorola's free LibMoto extension. For PowerPC users, this can speed up floating point routines. You can get this free extension here. However, Mike Breeden, of Accelerate Your Mac!, doesn't recommend this for several reasons - one is that he's seen it do literally nothing for real world apps (a 4 second savings in a 5:44 Bryce 2 rendering for instance). According to Mike, "It was made to boost MacBench basically from what I was told by a ex-Moto engineer and as noted on my Libmoto pages there are accuracy issues and compatibility issues with some software."

18. Make sure that 'Calculate folder sizes' is unchecked in the 'view options' for each folder. For System 7.x, this option is in the views control panel.

19. Don't put too many files in a single folder. The more files in a folder, the longer it'll take to display them.

20. In the mouse control panel, click on the fastest mouse tracking. In the trackpad control panel, click on the fastest tracking speed. This is somewhat subjective, but speed is speed.

21. Turn off menu blinking in the general controls control panel. Each time you select a menu item, you wait about a second for it to blink once or twice.

22. First and foremost, organize your Mac and get rid of all the junk on your hard drive. I'm constantly getting rid of applications and files I no longer use or need. As a result, my drive is lean and thin, and I know where everything is without having to waste time searching for a file. For someone with an organized drive, Sherlock's Find feature is useless. When you download a shareware program, it likely comes with 'Read Me' files, manuals, licenses, and other stuff that you may or may not ever use. Get rid of the stuff you don't use. Scan your preferences folder occasionally and get rid of preference files from applications you no longer have.

23. Put an alias of your hard drive(s) in the Apple Menu Items folder. This has been suggested by several readers, and I myself have been doing this for years. Use a space as the first character so it shows up as the first item on the menu. You can also put aliases of other folders in the Apple Menu. I avoid clicking on my hard drive icon and sifting through folders like the plague.

24. Outside of the control strip, I'm not a big fan of floating palettes. I enjoy my real estate and hate having palettes cluttering up my pretty desktop pictures. Basically, if it doesn't go on the menu bar or the control strip, I don't want to hear about it (this is purely personal preference though). Many control strip modules are invaluable, depending on what you're after. In fact, I'm such a big fan of the control strip that I don't even use it. That's right! I have the control strip control panel and extension disabled. Instead, I have all my control strip modules loaded into ACTION GoMac 2.0. This is one of the most versatile utilities out there, acting as a launcher, control strip, Apple Menu, and more, all in one neat and tidy package.

25. There are many browser bookmark managers out there. My two favorites are Web Quick and URL Manager. I have been using Web Quick for two years or so, and I can't imagine life without it now. Web Quick places a system-wide icon on your menu bar containing up to 500 or so recently visited sites and up to 500 or so of your favorite sites, plus a few other things. It's well organized, intuitive, and easily accessible. The menu also pops up when you hold down the mouse button in your browser's window. Selecting a site from the menu bar will open your browser, if it isn't already open, and go to that site. Web Quick is everything your browser's bookmark manager should be. URL Manager is a more robust bookmark utility. It's an application in itself with its own window and has more options than Web Quick. However, the interface is not as clean, nor intuitive, and you need to shuffle between URL Manager's window and your browser's to access bookmarks. Still, it's a powerful manager and worth looking into.

26. Turn off 'Recent Items' in Apple Menu Options. This is the source of some crashes, and your processor won't have to spend time keeping track of recent stuff.

27. Rebuild your desktop more often, and use Disk First Aid while you're at it. Both these can cure potential problems before they get out of hand or slow down your Mac.

28. Regardless of the newest OS' open and save boxes, use ACTION Files or Default Folder. Both of the excellent utilities dramatically speed up the time need to open or save files.

29. Restart your Mac every now and then. Memory becomes fragmented as you open and close programs and files, eventually slowing things down. Restarting will 'reset' your memory.

30. Of course, the most obvious and expensive solution is to buy a processor upgrade!

These simple steps will noticeably speed up your Mac. Do you have any other speed secrets or productivity tips to share?

Stephen Hildreth has been the Editor-in-Chief of PowerBook Central since its inception in 1996. When not working on his Mac, he shares his love of the outdoors with his family and can be found biking, snow skiing, or educating students on the internal & external processes of our planet.