OS X basics and maintenance

hey ya'll,

this isn't my 1st post, but the 1st one on my new mac. been using it for a couple of days now and I really dig it.

I have some basics questions...

1. generally, always put the iMac to sleep rather than shutting it down? I've read somewhere that the OS performs certain maintenance tasks during the night, which only works if the mac is either on or in sleep mode. then again I've read somehwere else that the maintenance stuff only runs when the mac is on, not in sleep mode.

2. as far as maintenance apps are concerned, which one(s) would you guys recommend? macjanitor, onyx, applejack, cocktail....?

3. safari: any chance to turn off the automatic download feature. I prefer being asked if and where I want to DL/save things!

thanks in advance for the help!

1) OS X will only perform them if the mac is on and running - but with one of the apps you mentioned in 2) you can start them any time.

2) I like onyX as it also can enable lots of hidden features of OS X... Macjanitor is the most straightforward I've tried. Cocktail is shareware whilst the other 2 are free.

3) You can set the download location to something else, but I don't think you can get it to ask you where to download something to normally.
There might however be add-ons that let you do this. ('Saft' is one - not sure if it can do this though)


Woohoo 1,900 posts!!!!! GO ME!

thanks for the reply!

so, generally, what's the best way to operate the mac? only shut it down rarely/only restart every so often/etc.?

Well shut it down as often as you want really... what's important to remember is that you won't notice a slowdown if you don't restart...

So either way it doesn't really affect performance.
I just let it sleep at night and manually run OnyX every so often.
Also repair disk permissions occasionaly: Apps>utilities>disk utility>repair disk permissions.