Hong
Kong - January 11th, 2005 - Twas the week
after Christmas, and all through the house
the family was glued to their screen and
their mouse.
Ma
had a new PowerBook, and the kid tons
of games, and I a column deadline (as
though nothing had changed).
And
as systems admin for the Horrigan clan,
it was quite a relief to get back to my
fan(s).
I
had moused through the season, and relatives
I did see, and was often summoned to fix
a PC, or teach some newbie a trick that
can't fail, or once more show granny how
to download e-mail.
I
dragged umpteen files on Macs old and
new, and repaired bad permissions until
I was blue.
A
wizard they called me, reputation intact.
But, frankly, I'm a home boy, and I'm
glad to be back.
Many
people received new Macs this holiday
season and some did not. I am not sure
who is better off. If you have a new machine,
you will have to transfer all your old
applications, documents, user accounts,
passwords and preferences to it - a project
that could take hours, or even days.
Although
it is still a lengthy process, if you
have a newer machine and OS 10.3, its
Setup Assistant will walk you through.
If
your old machine has FireWire, you can
connect the two machines and start up
the old one while holding down the T key.
It will automatically mount on the desktop
of the new Mac. From there, you can drag
the files you need onto your new machine.
The
files people worry about most are old
e-mail and contact information. These
are in your Documents folder. If you use
Microsoft Office, the important file is
the Microsoft User Data file.
One
of the confusing things about OSX is that
there is more than one of every important
file. There are two Documents folders,
two Applications folders, two Library
folders with two Fonts folders in them
- two or more of everything. Why?
One
set of everything can be assigned or licensed
to the computer. These folders are found
in the first directory column (the column
to the right of a selected disk). This
directory has Applications, Documents,
Library, System and Users in it.
But
when something is assigned or licensed
to you alone, it is found in the Users>Yourname
file. In the Yourname file, you will find
other Applications, Documents and Library
folders, but you (or the administrator)
will be the only one who can access and
use these files.
Different
applications will put important files
in one, the other or both places, so be
sure you drag the contents of both over
to your new machine.
If
your machine is a pre-FireWire Mac, you
can network to the old computer using
an Ethernet crossover cable (this is the
same as a regular Ethernet cable, except
the outer wires are reversed on one end).
The old Mac will then mount on your desktop
and you can drag files to their new home.
If
your old computer was a PC, Detto Technologies
makes an application called Move2Mac (www.detto.com/move2mac,
US$49.95) that networks to your PC via
USB cable and transfers important files
for you. But to open the transferred files,
you will need a Mac version of the applications
that created them.
If
you were not fortunate enough to get a
new Mac, there are a number of ways to
get your old one to feel like new.
Drag
all the old stuff you will never use on
your hard drive to the trash (when hard
drives get roughly 80 per cent full, they
can corrupt files).
Update
all the applications you use every day.
Check out www.versiontracker.com
to find what's available. From Safari
to Office, there are recent updates that
make a big difference in performance and
stability.
Now
would also be a good time to make a backup
if you have been neglecting this necessity.
Once
your drive has been cleaned up, it is
time for a little maintenance. The coolest
tool for this is the new and free sterX3,
available, at the moment, only on versiontracker.com.
SterX3
will also optimise a disk by updating
pre-bindings, or the links from applications
to shared library files. Updating these
makes applications start and run faster.
You should restart your Mac, update your
pre-bindings after installing any application,
and then restart the Mac.
SterX3
also repairs disk permissions, or instructions
on who is allowed into what file. The
permissions get changed a number of ways,
and when they do things go wrong.
If
you use Microsoft Office, compact the
e-mail database. Hold down the Option
key while starting Entourage. A window
will prompt you to undertake a major or
minor rebuild. The minor one is usually
sufficient if you have not had trouble
with it. Every time you delete an e-mail,
you leave its database slot empty. When
compacting, you delete all empty slots,
making the database half the size, which
lets an application such as Entourage
run faster.
