beginner questions (virus/spywares, startup speed, overclocking, ram upgrades)

Joined
Apr 23, 2010
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malaysia/singapore
Your Mac's Specs
macbook pro 15' i7
1) I have been wondering whether mac or pc is the best option for someone who is a complete beginner, or partial beginner.
My mum wants to buy a com, a previous PC user, but my dad took the tablet to work. I thought mac is a much better choice because of its user friendliness. But being a recent switcher as well, im afraid Im having some difficulties explaining certain things to my mum. haha.

I know mac doesnt not get infected by virus easily, or maybe not. How about spywares, are Macs prone to spywares? Or any way to prevent it while avoid installing apps that may slow down my system.

2) I realise my com startup speed slowed down after installing a few apps, even though my hard disk is still quite empty.
I empty my trash bins very frequently, I off my apps before I shut down, I keep my desktop empty. But startup speed remain SLOW, for a relatively new i7 mbp, it is pretty unacceptable to startup more than 80secs i guess. Then I ran Onyx and solved the problem, but I still dont quite understand how Onyx works. I dont understand what's all the cache about. Help please.
I also intend to overclock but I dont really know how to. Tips and advices needed! I dont really know how the new processor is working differently from the previous processors as well. Oops. sorry, beginner here. Dont go too harsh on me. :D

Last thing, I intend to upgrade ram from 4 to 8 to make dual OS boot runs smoother. But I find the upgrade to be very expensive. Is there any third party rams that is much cheaper and reliable? From what I know, I think normal PC ram upgrades are very cheap compare to this.

Whole chain of questions! help please! Thanks :)
 
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17 inch 2 GHz C2D imac (5,1) with 3GB DDR2 RAM, X1600 (128MB memory) GPU - OSX 10.6.3
1. Forst thing I would do if I were you is to look at the rather long post I made here. That has a lot of information in it, and would be very useful for a beginner to know.

Also there is no viruses or maleware for OS X (the Mac operation system). A few trogans exists but I would not worry about them as you have to some very specific things for them to even have a chance to work. So really you have no worries on that front.

And yes Macs are much more user friendly then the average PC running XP or W7.

2. Onyx just deletes unnecessary things like full caches. A cache is just a store for temporary files that applications use to run. And every so often cleaning these up with something like Onyx is a good idea. Also they can run the OS X maintainance scripts if you somehow missed them. It's a good idea to use Onyx every so often.

3. Ugrading ram you can use 3rd party ram from places like Cricual or OWC or your favourite store. Macs and PCs use the same types of ram. Just remember iMacs use notebook style ram. But if you know exactly what ran you are after, then you can get it relatively cheap from your favourite store. Apple itsef are on the expensive side for ram upgrades. So go 3rd party and you can choose your favourite brand of ram too.

And for Ram brands, Cricial, Kingston, OWC are all good brands. I have 3GB kingston in my imac and it runs really well.
 
Joined
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An 8Gb ram upgrade usually means two sticks of 4Gb - and these are expensive still, no matter where/who makes them.

The 2Gb sticks are a lot cheaper - only if your PC/MAC has four (or more) slots for memory then 8gb is cheaper this way.
 

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