There are programs out there to clean out the various system and
program caches on the Mac. There seems to be some debate on whether
these are necessary, and how often they should be run.
Here's a web page devoted to mac maintenance that Cheryl posted to
the list a few months ago, that I've found quite useful.
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
HTH
Darcy
On 16-Jan-07, at 9:29 AM, Christopher Hallsworth wrote:
Thanks for that Greg. What I mean by cleaning the disk is that in
Windows, there is a utility called Disk Cleanup which basically cleans
up temporary files, internet junk, etc. Hope that's clearer now, and
thanks again for your thoughts.
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:22:54 -0700, "Greg Kearney"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
said:
Hello;
i'll take a shot at answering this. Here are my thoughts.
- Update Windows
Well let's hope your not updating Windows on a Mac. But system
updates on a Mac arrive and are downloaded automatically, unless you
turn this feature off. I have seldom seen any updates that take
longer than 10 minutes to install and that includes any number of
application updates that you might get at the same time.
- Clean up the disk
Of course it is possible to make just as big a mess of a Mac's hard
drive as it is in Windows. I'm not sure what you mean by cleaning up
the disk.
- Scan the disk for errors
Drive scanning, known as fsck, I'm not kidding that is the real name
of the UNIX program that does that task, is done each time you turn
on the Mac or install software or updates. takes no more than a
minute or two.
- Defragment the disk
As a rule we don't defragment UNIX/Mac disks that's what fsck is for.
- Update my antispyware and perform scan
- Update my antivirus and perform a virus check
There has never been a reported virus/spyware for Macintosh computers
in the wild. I don't run anti-virus software on any of my Macs
including a server connected to the internet. There is anti-virus
software for the Mac but I'm not sure what it does what with no
viruses to find.I would assume it would take about the same amount of
time to scan a Mac as it would a PC.
(What a racket Mac antivirus software for Macs is. Think about it
all you have to do is make some minor file changes every month and
people pay you for softeware that does...nothing!)
I would say that on a mac the tasks you outline should take no more
than 1-20 minutes depending on the number and size of the updates.
ubt even for most of that time you could still use the computer for
other tasks.
Greg Kearney
On Jan 16, 2007, at 07:04 , Christopher Hallsworth wrote:
Hi all,
I've just finished the maintenance on my Windows machine. It took
nearly
5 hours to do the following:
- Update Windows
- Clean up the disk
- Scan the disk for errors
- Defragment the disk
- Update my antispyware and perform scan
- Update my antivirus and perform a virus check
I have a couple of mac questions relating to the above.
1. Will I have to do any of the tasks listed above?
2. If so, how long would it take?
Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Christopher Hallsworth
Skype name chrishallsworth7266
Christopher Hallsworth
Skype name chrishallsworth7266
