June 15, 1998
by Stephen Hildreth
Editor-in-Chief

Can't afford one of those new G3 upgrades for your 1400 or 2400? Getting frustrated with that old 165c, but just don't have the cash for a new 'Book? Here are a few speed secrets for those who can't afford to buy a new machine or processor upgrade:

1. Max out the RAM in your PowerBook.

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.

4. Use the latest version of Speed Doubler.

5. Turn off virtual memory.

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.

Personally, I like looking at pictures instead of patterns, so I'm willing to sacrifice some speed to look at a picture of Hawaii all day. I've been using a RAM disk for Netscape's cache for some time, and it works great. I have a 5MB RAM disk and set Netscape's cache folder as the RAM disk in Netscape's preferences. I used Surf Express for a few months, but it caused nothing but trouble on my PowerBook, and I really didn't notice any difference in loading time. I trashed Surf Express a few weeks ago, and Netscape has been much happier since.

Need even more speed tricks? The next four revolve around your hard drive:

8. Buy a faster hard drive.

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.

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

11. Update your hard disk driver.

The next few tips are more general and may only provide a subtle or subjective increase in speed. Number 15, however, can provide a generous speed boost.

12. Use MacOS 8.1. 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. This tip is from reader Michael Nelson: "Use Conflict Catcher and make sure you don't have any extensions or control panels that have 68K code, these as you know 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.

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.

So what sorts of things can you do to your Mac to increase productivity and the speed with which you work? Lots of things, actually. While I'm not going to try and cover everyone's personal preferences, there a few things you can do to make life easier.

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, the 'Find' command 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 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. Alias Menu puts customized menus in the menu bar. Each customized menu represents a folder containing anything you wish, and it can be represented in the menu bar as a name or an icon. This is a really cool shareware program - I have the main HTML files of this site listed under one menu for easy access and modification. OtherMenu also adds a customized menu to the menu bar.

25. 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). Two of my control strip modules are invaluable. The first is a module that displays all open applications as an icon on the strip (called Process Switch). Just click on an icon and it brings that particular application to the front - no having to drop menus, scroll, or anything like that, just click and there it is. The second is called HandyMan. HandyMan puts the icon of any application or file you wish on the strip for one-click access. Just click on the icon, and the file or application opens right up. Again, no scrolling, menu dropping, or anything like that. I keep icons of my eight most used programs on HandyMan's strip for one-click access.

On the subject of floating palettes, this tip is from reader Marc Zeedar: "You may THINK you don't like floating palettes, but you obviously haven't tried Westcode Software's One Click (actually, Marc, I have - Steve). It is the single best speed-up for any Mac I know about. It allows you to create your own floating palettes totally customized with your own buttons that can do just about anything (depending on how good you are at scripting).

One Click ships with a number of palettes like Launcher (the size and behavior of it is customizable), the System Bar (which is better than the Control Strip because it remains hidden until your cursor touches the bottom of the screen -- then it pops up), and my favorite, the Task Bar, which shows icons of all currently active apps. To open a GIF in Photoshop, for instance, just drop the file onto the PS icon. Great for opening Word files in a different program.

Note: One Click palettes can be hidden or "collapsed" to a bar or icon. Screen real estate is hardly and issue. You can even make one palette "pop up" on another!"

26. There are many browser bookmark managers out there. My two favorites are Web Quick and URL Manager. I have been using Web Quick for a year 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.

I also use the launcher 'Control Strip Menu' as a bookmark manager. Control Strip Menu places a button on your control strip representing a folder(s) containing anything you wish. In my case, the folder is stuffed with my favorite mac bookmarks. Click on the button, a menu pops up, and select a bookmark. Alias Menu could probably be used the same way.

These simple steps will noticeably speed up your PowerBook. While we're not talking G3 speed here, you'll still see an improvement. Do you have any other speed secrets or productivity tips to share? Send them to us. We'll compile a list of folk's suggestions and post them here in the near future.

Reader reader replies to this editorial.