Stupid iMac question..

[opiate69]

So, as I said earlier, we recently bought a 17 inch desktop.. I was wondering if there was any routine cleaning/maintenace procedures? With our old PC we would go through and run disc cleanup regularly to get rid of old temp files and such... is this necessary with the Mac, and if so, how do I go about doing it? Thanks

[Poiuyt]

1. Repair permissions

I do this about once a week just because I use my computer a lot. I also do it before I do any system updates. It's done via the Disk Utility program in the Utilities folder. Here's a good article about repairing permissions:

http://www.macworld.com/2006/08/secrets/repairpermissions/

If you do a lot of web surfing, I've found that a maintenance program like YASU (it's free) is good for cleaning out cache and history, etc.

[Redstone]

2. There's some question about that:

http://daringfireball.net/2004/12/software_update

But I can't offer an opinion one way or the other, being new to OS X (as you may remember).

I will say that a nice thing about buying AppleCare is that you get a copy of TechTool.

PS: You were right in what you told me about OS X a couple of months back. It's not bad at all.

Redstone

[Poiuyt]

3. I've heard that about repairing permissions, but I've been doing it for years

I don't do it much on my dual G5 that I use for work (which isn't hooked up to the internet), but I do it weekly with my mini, which actually gets more use. Sometimes I think just restarting your computer is good routine maintenance.

Like I said, I also use YASU whenever things seem to be getting bogged down. In the rare event that I have a problem, I use DiskWarrior.

Glad you're liking OSX. It took me a while to get used to the interface, but now I greatly prefer it.

[opiate69]

5. I need to pull out my copy of Apple Care and see if that has it..thanks, Redstone..

[opiate69]

4. I'll read up on that..thanks!

[Adelante]

6. I use OnyX

I don't know if it's considered better or worse than anything else. I run it about once a week.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

[Poiuyt]

7. Onyx and YASU are very similar

They're good when things start to get sluggish