New *worried* switcher

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WadeMCarter


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hey guys, my name is wade and i am new to macs. I am very excited about owning one,actually, i think i became a little too excited, and when my mac arrived, i downloaded everything for it that i had read about...

now that i am regretting it, i started to move all the files i didnt actually need to the trash and then proceeded to empty the trash. i have pretty bad anxiety, so all this installation and removal is making me feel a bit uneasy.. plus some movie i was watching that i downloaded using cabos didnt work until i ran it through VLC, so a popup appeared asking if it was a bug, which made me worried.

according to my activity monitor, i have ~337MB wired, ~270MB active, ~427MB inactive...with a grandtotal of 1.01 GB being used. There are 1017 MB free... does this look alright?

are there some applications for monitoring my computer to make sure it is running efficently?? this is my computer for college as well and i dont want things to go wrong.

i am trying to jump into this mac world, but I also jsut tried learning to use terminal... i feel really overwhelmed and stressed right now, and if anyone can relieve me of this stress by telling me whats up, i would deeply appreciate it.

Thanks!!

wade
 
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You seem to be worrying a lot! OS X looks after itself - there's no need to worry about Activity Monitor and memory usage (the memory looks fine by the way).

Every 5 or 6 months it can be worth running a free program called Onyx to clear out caches and clean up file permissions, but your Mac won't suffer from junk piling up.

Try downloading DivXPlayer and trying your video through that. If your video uses an obscure codec, it can cause video programs to complain.

Another thing is that it's a good idea to leave your Mac on overnight occasionally. OS X does some self cleaning between 3 and 4 am.
 
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WadeMCarter


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yeah i have been researching a lot, while messing around with terminal, i have ran the cleaning program manually to get things like whatif to run.. I am up about 21 hours of the day as well, so the computer will usually be on at 3am.

are there numbers i should be concerned with regarding speed and things?? i dont want to download *too much*...
 
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yogi


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Actually, you don't need to download anything, basically. For your videos, throw out everythign except VLC. Then install Perian for quicktime, which will let you watch most stuff in Quicktime itself, OS X's built-in media (p)layer.

Try to stay lean on apps you don't need. To keep your system running smoothly, just let it run, OS X cleans itself up. If you want to do some more intensive cleaning, try MainMenu.
 
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MacHeadCase

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Welcome to Mac-Forums, Wade. It is worth noting that Mac OS X runs its own maintenance scripts only when it is awake so if you let your Mac sleep or shut it down, those scripts don't run.

I choose for a variety of reasons to shut it down every night. When I boot it in the morning, the first thing I do is run MainMenu's daily maintenance script.
 
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WadeMCarter


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alright, just used it for the first time and i am very satisfied. i think this is going to be a beautiful relation ship between this forum, me, and my computer.. haha should i keep the weekly and monthly schedule spaced exactly by a month, or does it just have to be *about* a week or month apart??
 
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It doesn't even have to be that rigid. Just when you feel like it!
 
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MacHeadCase

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I'm thinking that if Unix has daily scripts, a weekly script and a monthly script, they must serve a purpose and I certainly wasn't part of the team that built Unix so am thinking here they know better than I do. ;)
 
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WadeMCarter


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MacHead, how strict are you when it comes to running the scripts aside from running the daily script when you first turn on your computer?

Also, what does the weekly and monthly script do that the daily script doesn't accomplish?
 
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MacHeadCase

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They each have their own purpose.

This article might help you understand better:

Each maintenance script — daily, weekly, and monthly — has a specific function.

• The daily script removes old log files, "scratch" and "junk" files, backs-up the NetInfo database, reports a variety of system and network statistics, and rotates the system.log file. Under Tiger, the daily script also cleans up scratch fax files and prunes asl.log, the log for the new Apple System Logging facility.

The output from the daily script is written to the /var/log/daily.out file, which can be viewed in Console.
By default, the daily script is scheduled to run daily at 03:15 hours local time.

• The weekly script rebuilds the locate and whatis databases and rotates — depending on the version of Mac OS X you are using — the following log files: ftp.log, lookupd.log, lpr.log, mail.log, netinfo.log, ipfw.log, ppp.log, and secure.log

The output from the weekly script is written to the /var/log/weekly.out file, which can be viewed in Console.
By default, the weekly script is scheduled to run every Saturday at the following times:

Under Tiger: 03:15 hours local time.
Under Panther and Jaguar: 04:30 hours local time.

• The monthly script reports per-user usage accounting and rotates — depending on the version of Mac OS X you are using — the wtmp, install.log, and cu.modem.log files.

The output from the monthly script is written to the /var/log/monthly.out file, which can be viewed in Console.
By default, the monthly script is scheduled to run on the first of the month at 05:30 hours local time.
Click to expand...

Hope this helps.
 
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WadeMCarter


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That helps a lot. I will setup reminders in iCal to run the scripts manually.

I just installed Microsoft Office, and as I read the applications and files that it was loading on to my computer, I realized that I was getting *a lot* of things that I would most likely never use, like a Russian dictionary, for example. Do you know where I can access these files to remove them? Should I use spotlight and just look around, or do you suggest that I don't remove them? I think I will stop asking so many questions and refer to the search function, haha. :)
 
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Brown Study


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WadeMCarter said:
. . . I realized that I was getting *a lot* of things that I would most likely never use, like a Russian dictionary, for example.
Click to expand...
There are at least a couple of apps to remove gigabytes of languages in the OS that you don't use, the free Monolingual being one of them. But if you use it, don't remove any alternatives of any language you'd want to keep: Don't delete British, Australian and/or Canadian English, for example.

TrimTheFat is free, as well. It yanks PowerPC code from apps if the machine is an Intel, and Intel coding if the machine is a PowerPC.

I think it comes with a warning that a few apps might not work properly after the extra coding is pulled, but they are few and far between. It would be only a minor annoyance, anyway, because the app could be loaded again.

If you use TrimTheFat, set the preferences first to delete the unneeded version of any app, not separate the two. If you don't, you'll end up with duplicate apps, with one of each having the wrong code and being completely useless.
 
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BlackCivic


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Hey Wade, you know if no one asks questions then a lot of us won't get answers to questions we haven't even thought of asking... Thanks to you guys, main menu is a great application to use when looking to do daily or annual maintenance...
 
Ninjab3ar

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WadeMCarter said:
hey guys, my name is wade and i am new to macs. I am very excited about owning one,actually, i think i became a little too excited, and when my mac arrived, i downloaded everything for it that i had read about...

now that i am regretting it, i started to move all the files i didnt actually need to the trash and then proceeded to empty the trash. i have pretty bad anxiety, so all this installation and removal is making me feel a bit uneasy.. plus some movie i was watching that i downloaded using cabos didnt work until i ran it through VLC, so a popup appeared asking if it was a bug, which made me worried.

according to my activity monitor, i have ~337MB wired, ~270MB active, ~427MB inactive...with a grandtotal of 1.01 GB being used. There are 1017 MB free... does this look alright?

are there some applications for monitoring my computer to make sure it is running efficently?? this is my computer for college as well and i dont want things to go wrong.

i am trying to jump into this mac world, but I also jsut tried learning to use terminal... i feel really overwhelmed and stressed right now, and if anyone can relieve me of this stress by telling me whats up, i would deeply appreciate it.

Thanks!!

wade
Click to expand...

Wade! I know its great to keep your computer in tip-top shape, but calm down! From reading your post, I can see that nothing went wrong, lol. Did you just recover from a severe computer crash that left you traumatized for life?

Don't worry, it's fine, you're not using windows anymore :).
 
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WadeMCarter


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This forum is awesome! You all are very knowledgeable/ helpful/ funny. But I was just making sure I don't mess this computer up, even though I have read that mac's are very forgiving to their users... unless the user removes something in terminal... but thats another story.

I am extremely relieved not to be using windows anymore, but pretty soon I will have to also use XP(I have heard nothing but bad about vista) on my computer because I have to use autoCAD LT for school in the fall, and I don't think there is a way to run it on OS X, unless you guys have another cool application that allows me to run microsoft software on OS X*crossing fingers* !!
 
Ninjab3ar

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WadeMCarter said:
This forum is awesome! You all are very knowledgeable/ helpful/ funny. But I was just making sure I don't mess this computer up, even though I have read that mac's are very forgiving to their users... unless the user removes something in terminal... but thats another story.

I am extremely relieved not to be using windows anymore, but pretty soon I will have to also use XP(I have heard nothing but bad about vista) on my computer because I have to use autoCAD LT for school in the fall, and I don't think there is a way to run it on OS X, unless you guys have another cool application that allows me to run microsoft software on OS X*crossing fingers* !!
Click to expand...

AutoCAD LT? What are you studying?

Im saying this because im an architecture major and I use AutoCAD 2007.
 

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