Degunking Your Mac

by Joli Ballew

Degunking Your Mac covers the latest operating system (OS X Panther) and earlier versions, including OS 9. It provides the essential tips and tricks to help all Mac users bring their computers up to top performance. This book is a huge time saver because it's organized according to the special twelve-step degunking process that will improve the performance of any Mac. The book includes a handy degunking chart that will help users really focus on what they need to do to clean their Macs. All of the crucial degunking tips and tricks are in the book, including how to degunk Macs that run dual operating systems, how to better manage hard drives that get gunked up with all types of media files, how to properly optimize the desktop, how to manage fonts properly and get rid of unneeded ""font gunk,"" how to properly get rid of the extra stuff that OS X installs, how best to deal with spam, how to fix and improve the Dock and Desktop, and much more. The book provides proven degunking maintenance tasks that users should perform on a regular basis to keep their Macs running at optimum levels. Mac users really need this book because it will help them get organized (and stay organized), optimize their workspace, solve clutter problems, and keep their Macs running fast and smoothly.

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2004

About the author

Joli Ballew is a Microsoft MVP for the Windows Desktop Experience, a technology trainer, and writer in the Dallas area. She holds several certifications including MCSE, A+, MCDST, and MCTS: Project 2007 and Windows 7 Configuring. In addition to writing, she teaches computer classes at two local community colleges (Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch, Texas and Collin College in Plano, Texas), and work as a network administrator for North Texas Graphics. She was recently hired as the Microsoft IT Academy Coordinator at Brookhaven College and earned the MCT certification from Microsoft.
Jodi has written over 50 books, written for Microsoft's Windows XP Expert Zone and created training videos for Keystone Learning. She has published over 400 articles for BrightHub as well. She has also written a textbook for Microsoft's MCDST certification, as well as a book for passing the MCTS: Managing Projects in Project 2007 certification.
In her free time, she enjoys golf, yard work, and teaching my cats, Pico and Lucy, tricks.

Source: http://www.joliballew.com/

Reviews

[The other John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Back in the day, I used to know my Mac pretty well. I could tweak my system just the way I wanted it and could avoid a lot of problems. But over the years I got lazy and let the IT guys start doing all the work. The result is that I don't know the latest OS near as well as I should. I was hoping that this book would give me the information I need to regain some of my expertise and "get under the hood" of Mac OS X. I was disappointed. While this book contained a few tidbits of info, it was mostly a lecture on keeping your files organized. Stuff I would have thought to be common sense. It wasn't even enjoyable to read. There were many times I felt like the message that I was getting was, "Work like me and you'll be happy." It also seemed like she repeated herself a lot. Whether it was to drill some ideas into thick heads or to pad out the book to make it a book rather than a fat pamphlet, I don't know. All in all, I think my time would have been better spent surfing the web and browsing through Mac oriented web sites and message boards. Oh, well, live and learn.