Defrag and General Cleaning

I was helping a friend out with some problems on his Windows Vista on a Toshiba machine, I had to laugh, its like comparing Atari Tennis to Splinter Cell, if you look at Vista compared to OSX. Anyhow, I am a new mac user of 6 months and will never EVER go back to Windows! Yay me!

My question is, I like to keep my machines clean, tidy and no junk on them. I was wondering, where do I find the actual folder where I download apps for example and delete them from the Documents folder. Someone said to me before thats the good thing about Macs, no add/remove programs, simply delete the folder as no system registery to clean. Is this true and also, is there a Defrag on this new MacBooks or is there none as you simply delete the folder from the original location of the install?

Thanks

The default download folder is in Users > Yourname > Downloads
Unless you have speced a different folder in t=your Browser's prefs then all the stuff you downloaded is in there.

You can just delete an Application to uninstall it. the odd preference file will be left in the Library > Preferences folder, but they don't take up much space. If you like to uninstall apps and any associated files then 2 utilities AppCleaner and AppDelete will do a thorough job.

There is no registry on OS X

You should not need to defrag OS X, the OS does this task in the background, usually when you are not using it. I would recommend programs like MainMenu and/or Onyx which let you run the OS'es maintenance tasks manually, as well as other tasks

Thanks for your help.

Here's a great Apple support document regarding fragmentation:

About disk optimization with Mac OS X

I use iDefrag to defragment my MBP, it works wonders. The last time i did it, my computer sped up a bit.

To keep your Mac running in top condition, I would recommend what I do, about once every few weeks:

1/ Start up Disk Utility and do the "Repair Disk" and "Repair Disk Permissions".

2/ Get a copy of OnyX (Titanium Software) and run through its Maintenance and Cleaning routines.

3/ Reboot when done.

I do this every few weeks and find that it is about all I need to keep my Mac humming at high speed.

Onyx has a feature to repair disk permissions. So you can do everything at once.

Applejack is also a very nice application to clean things up a bit once the system has been banged around a bit for several months. Not entirely necessary though unless your system is flaking out a bunch, taking forever to boot/shutdown, etc...
-Dave

XJ-linux said:

Applejack is also a very nice application to clean things up a bit once the system has been banged around a bit for several months. Not entirely necessary though unless your system is flaking out a bunch, taking forever to boot/shutdown, etc...
-Dave

Click to expand...

I agree.

In fact, I'll take it a step farther and say that AppleJack should be factory installed by Apple.

AppleJack is a set of maintenance and repair scripts that can be accessed only from single-user mode (i.e. you press and hold Command+S at startup).

At the prompt, simply type "AppleJack" and then select the option to put it on "auto pilot". It will run all of the most important maintenance tasks and prompt you when it's done to reboot.

Very handy, especially if you're on the road and your Mac starts acting up. As long as you can get into single user mode, you're good to go.