January 27, 2009 | Filed Under Switch to Mac | No Comments
Posted by Charlie V. 
While computers these days can do some amazing things, they are requiring more and more resources to do them. One resource that cannot be overlooked is RAM (Random-Access Memory). When you ask your computer to perform multiple tasks at once, and are working with large file sizes, RAM instantly becomes your best friend.
“Well how do I know how much RAM is enough?” This is an excellent question, and it varies by what type of user you might be. Here are a few examples…
Light user - “My computer is my email, internet and word processor machine. Nothing else.”
Medium (Regular) user - “I have digital photos, videos and music on my computer and whatever else my kids have thrown on there!”
Heavy user - “Having 4+ applications open at a time is normal for me. I am in front of the computer most the day.”
Pro user - “From desktop publishing, operating virtual machines and the Adobe Creative Suite, everything I do on my computer is a benchmark test!”
Have you figured out where you stand? Most users will find themselves hovering between a couple of categories, but these give you a good generalization for determining your appropriate RAM quantities. Light users, 1GB of RAM is your new minimum. Operating systems and word processors can take up more power than you think, and you also want to make your machine last as long as you can. Medium and heavy users should up this amount to 2GB. Digital media (photos, videos, music) are both hard drive and RAM hogs. Heavy and Pro users, look at joining the 3GB+ club. I even managed to max out 3GB last night when running a virtual Windows machine, synching my iDisk, working in Photoshop and listening to music! One of the unique things about RAM is, if it’s available, your computer will use it (Unlike hard drive space, that will stay vacant until its needed). I recently updated a machine from 1GB to 4GB of RAM, and now it never uses under a minimum of 1.2GB (Think of it as someone moving into a big new house. Even though it’s much larger than their old one, they’ll still find a way to fill it!). One thing is for sure, everyone should overestimate their computer usage when buying, and opt for that RAM upgrade!
-Charlie
November 3, 2008 | Filed Under Switch to Mac | No Comments
Posted by Charlie V.
While some methods are more detailed than others, any system backup is better than nothing. Whether it’s occasionally burning family photos and your music library to CD or employing a robust backup program, the peace of mind knowing your files are safe when your hard drive crashes is priceless. Notice I said when your hard drive crashes, not if your hard drive crashes; it will happen to everyone sometime, I’ve already fallen victim! Luckily, there are things we can do. Most take minimal time (only minutes to set up), and then run themselves as often as you want. I’m going to touch base on two of the most popular backup programs for Mac OS X users today, Time Machine and SuperDuper.
Time Machine comes standard with Mac OS X.5 Leopard, and is by far the most elegant and easy to use backup system I’ve ever come across… once it was set up. You need to be aware of the system requirements before using Time Machine, including an external hard drive (big enough to hold all of your system files), Airport Extreme (if you want to backup wirelessly) and obviously, Leopard.
Once you have all the required items for Time Machine, and have your external backup hard drive mounted on your desktop, simply start the application in System Preferences [System Preferences > Time Machine > Turn switch to ON]. You can set time machine to backup as often as you’d like, and the advantage to this application over other backups is the ability to view archived documents on the fly without mounting any old disk images, and you can even search your backups with Spotlight! All of this data storage can fill up fast, so I recommend buying the largest backup hard drive in your budget (You can find 500GB hard drives for under $150!). You can set Time Machine to not back up certain files and folders if you wish through system preferences, which can save a great deal of time and hard disk space, but when it comes to back up files, the more the merrier! Next time, I’ll discuss a popular ‘clone’ backup system, SuperDuper.
-Charlie
October 31, 2008 | Filed Under Switch to Mac | No Comments
Posted by Charlie V.
If you’re an iCal user, you know that there are three common ways to view your events and to-do items, day view, week view and month view. What if you wanted to switch between these quickly without taking your hands off the keyboard? You can with these useful keyboard shortcuts!
CMD⌘ + 1 Switch to Day view
CMD⌘ + 2 Switch to Week view
CMD⌘ + 3 Switch to Month view
CMD⌘ + R Arrow Advance to next day, week or month, depending on your current view
CMD⌘ + L Arrow Move to previous day, week or month, depending on your current view
CMD⌘ + OPTION + (numberkey 1-7) Can display multiple multiple days at once, select how many days you want to view at a time, and press that number key
CMD⌘ + N Create a new event
CMD⌘ + K Create a new to do
Enjoy!
-Charlie
October 27, 2008 | Filed Under Switch to Mac | No Comments
Posted by Charlie V.
A co-worker filled me in on a very useful tool for all iPhone users who have software update 2.0 or higher. You can capture a screenshot that is saved to your pictures folder at anytime on the iPhone by holding down the power button and then pressing and releasing the center ‘Home’ button. The screen will flash white for a split second, and then return to normal, telling you that the screenshot has been taken, and the picture is saved to your camera library. View any of your screenshots instantly from your iPhone photo library, or import them to your computer on your next sync and view them there.
Why is this useful? I have found this to be a very nice alternative to the copy/paste function that is unfortunately missing on the iPhone. If there is a phone # on a website I want to remember, or an address in Google Maps that I want to save later, I can snap a quick screenshot, and know the information is quickly available to me the next time I need it. Cut and paste would be great, but until then I’ve found this to be the next best thing.
Now you can have fun snapping pictures with both the built-in camera AND the screenshot technique! Enjoy!
-Charlie
October 23, 2008 | Filed Under Switch to Mac | No Comments
Posted by Charlie V.
A common question I receive from both customers and friends is, “How often should I shut down my Mac?” The answer to this question depends on your usage, software and whether you’re using a desktop or laptop computer (everyone’s different!).
First, lets define the two extremes; those who shut down religiously every night, and those who never shut down. Those who shut down every night tout the energy conservation, the opportunity to let fans and other moving components rest and cool down, and the benefits of running the machine the next day on a fresh startup. Those who always keep their machine running appreciate the chance for updates to complete while they’re away from their machine, the ‘instant on,’ functionality they have when they sit down at the machine, and their ability to keep files and folders open on the desktop for convenient access the next day.
Now for some facts before divulging a few solutions…
1. Mac OS X sleep works by shutting down every core sub-system of the OS except for the memory manager, which allows for conservation of recent documents and applications, and a really fast ‘refresh’ time
2. Never shutting down and never logging out of your computer will eventually lead to very large system swap files which can cause computer lag time
3. Your Mac will prompt you when OS X needs to restart (mostly following a software update)
4. Never letting your Mac shut down or sleep does put strain on your fans, drives, and power supply
5. Shutting down saves more energy than simply logging out or putting a computer to sleep
So, what should you do? I recommend a healthy mix of sleep and shut down’s (no extremes!). Use your Energy Saver settings in System Preferences to allow your computer to sleep after 30min (or so) of inactivity. Also, at night I highly recommend logging out of your machine (Go to > Log Out [your username]) to help manage swap file sizes. Logging back in the next day will be much faster than a cold startup and you’ll still reap the benefits of a quicker machine! A general rule of thumb is if you won’t use your Mac within a 48 hour timeframe (i.e. over a weekend), completely shut down, giving your Mac some time to really sleep. Laptop users hopping from place-to-place, simply closing the lid and letting your Mac sleep is just fine. If you notice some unusually slow lag-time in your Mac and other odd behavior, restart for safe keeping. And like I said above, your Mac is good at letting you know when it needs to restart because of software updates, etc. Following these practices should help you have a happy Mac!
-Charlie