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One of the reasons why I fell in love with the PC back in the day, was because I could tweak it. I loved playing with configuration. I love to mess around and discover speed tweaks that are turned off by default. I was talking with Jeff the other day, and he mentioned that he would be using Safari on his Mac, if only he could enable a single window mode (which is NOT a visible configuration option). I am completely with him there. The only reason I don’t use Firefox as my default browser is due to a GUI that just isn’t “there” yet for me, as well as a few speed issues.

So as I’m talking to Jeff, I mentioned Secrets, which is a database of hidden settings for Mac OS X. When installed, it will scan your system and look at everything you use. It will then recommend what you need to enable in order to make your experience a better one. Think of it as a “TweakUI” that continues to grow as more of these tweaks are added to the central database. All these different things are pulled in from across the Internet and added on a regular basis.

That’s the great thing about OS X. You can tweak certain things. All the tweaks that are surfaced inside the Secrets preference pane are usually only able to be toggled on the command line. This application surfaces them all into a GUI. It’s free, and it’s easy. This is definitely one of the best freeware apps for Mac OS X I’ve come across. Here are just a few of the tweaks you can apply:

• Grab File type for screen captures
• Every App Scroll bar type
• Safari Use circular progress indicator
• Dock Dock Appearance, minimize effect and pinning
• Xcode Organization name
• Safari Enable debug menu
• Dashboardlauncher Drag widgets out of dashboard
• Finder Show stripes in list views
• GlobalPreferences Login window desktop picture
• Finder Show hidden files
• iTunes Arrows link to library instead of store
• Terminal Make focus follow mouse
• Frontrowlauncher Enable high definition movie trailers
• Safari Show Link URL in Tool Tip

As always, do your homework. Make sure you know what it is you’re toggling, and that you make a good backup prior to making any changes.

What other tweaks and tips do you have? If they’re really good ones, I’ll definitely pass them along to the rest of the world.

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Speed up Mac OS X for Free

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How many days of the year do you complain about your connection speed? How many times do you mutter and groan that you aren’t getting the promised speeds? Here are some excellent tips to help you boost that speed.

• Schedule your downloads. There are many free download managers that allow you to set up downloads to go consecutively while you are asleep. Otherwise you’d have all of them going at one time, which could result in broken downloads. This is also VERY useful if you have HughesNet and always exceed your download threshold. You can schedule files to download late at night while the threshold is not in place. I recommend iGetter and Free Download Manager.
• Download items that you visit every day, rather than reloading them. If you’re like me, you listen to YouTube movies in the background of just about everything you do so you don’t have to pay a dollar for the song, but every time you come back to that page it takes a long time to reload. Instead of reloading the page you can download the video with Youtube Downloader and convert it into a usable format, including mp3, with that same program. Flash games can also be downloaded if you’re using Firefox. Wait for the flash file to load 100% and choose File > Save Page As. Then open up the folder you saved and take out the .swf file. Right click the file and choose to open it with Firefox. (You can then delete the folder)
• Know when to click links. If a page is loaded 100%, search for the next link you are going to use before you start viewing the page. If you find it, open it in a new tab and it can load while you are busy on the first page. If a page is in the middle of loading, but you find the link you want before it’s done, click stop before continuing on to the next link. Unless you know you’ll be occupied for a long time on one page (or away from the computer), don’t try to load multiple pages at a time.
• Leech!! If you have a laptop and know someone with DSL/Cable or other form of high speed, bring it over there and download as many things as you can to keep yourself occupied while on your slow connection. This may seem like mooching, but you can make it less obvious. Schedule LOTS of downloads before going over there. Then, once you’re there, plug your laptop in, resume the downloads, and do what you would normally do whenever you visit.
• Increase your cache size. If you increase the size of your cache and put your computer in sleep mode rather than shutting it down every night, frequently used pages will load quicker. To do this in Firefox, go to Tools > Options… > Advanced Icon > Network Tab.

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Optimize Your ISPs Slow Internet Connection

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People ask every day about ways they can keep their computer running smoothly, and how to make it faster. Here are some excellent tips that will help you accomplish both tasks. Keep those top five lists coming!

• Only install software that you need to have running on your system. Having software on your computer that you don’t actually need only increases the amount of used disk space on the said drive, whether it be your operating system drive or a secondary or external drive. If you have any software that you no longer use and would like to get rid of it, you can download a freeware program called Revo Uninstaller, which you can download for free. I can safely say that I’ve used this program to uninstall old programs I don’t use anymore or software I’ve installed just to test out. This program does a
  great job of scanning the system for invalid registry entries that get left behind after using this program to uninstall your programs compared to using Add/Remove programs in the control panel.
• Do some research and use before downloading any random program off the Internet. It is true that there are a lot of great free ware and shareware programs out there, but you have to understand, that the Internet is a big road to be driving on with your computer. Do your homework and do a little research about the program you wish to or are thinking about downloading and trying out. You would be surprised how much software out there is designed to give you the impression that it will do something like make your PC faster or make your Internet speed faster when in reality it will make your PC even run slower and might even have some nasties built-in! Be careful what you download!
• Don’t mess with anything inside the Operating System you know nothing about. Changing even the slightest zero to a one or one to a zero in the registry could leave your system unusable immediately or on the next reboot of the system. Don’t mess around the core of the operating system if you don’t know what you’re doing and especially if you’re only a basic user who checks E-Mail and rarely surfs the web. If you are a basic user and are still inclined to learn how to work with the inner workings of an operating system, use Google. Google is the biggest search engine and you can find just about anything on it.
• Use Anti-Virus software, even if you don’t want to pay for security software, there’s no excuse not to download a free Anti-Virus program such as AVG or Avast. I prefer AVG for performance reasons when choosing a free AV but Avast has slightly better detection rates. If you don’t care about paying for Anti-Virus software try out ESET’s NOD32, it will not slow down your system and is highly recommended by download the video:

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  How to Keep Your PC Clean and Fast (Speed up Tips)

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