Daily Techno-Babble

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Just got Leopard? Planning on doing an upgrade vs. a fresh install? Just finished your upgrade and want to know what you can do to make Leopard stop running like a dog? Look no further because I have three things your are going to need to do in order to get Leopard running smooth once you have completed your upgrade.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, OSX

1. Clean up that post-upgrade mess by running the OSX maintenance scripts.
It’s true that you could just wait this one out but why not make your Leopard experience fantastic right away? Simply open up terminal and run the following command to help OSX clean up your system and get Leopard running much faster without having to wait for these to run on the normal schedule.

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

Just enter your password when prompted and wait for the scripts to complete. It might take a while so don’t shutdown or reboot until you see the prompt return. On my Macbook Pro this made a huge improvement in the overall speed of Leopard and stopped much of the post-upgrade thrashing I was experiencing.

2. Clean out old software, check for upgrades on stuff you use.
I know this sounds like common sense but doing a simple check for any needed software upgrades BOTH before and after your installation of Leopard will save you lots of grief. I found several programs that needed upgrades after my Leopard install and all of them fixed some minor compatibility issues. I also found several old unused utilities that would have caused problems had I left them installed so I highly recommend doing some basic housecleaning prior to your upgrade if you can. Also don’t forget to check for Apple updates. Pre-upgrade I did not have any updates but after it said something needed to be updated so I would make sure to check just to be sure.

3. Run Time Machine last.
When you initially enable Time Machine it will want to create a new full backup of your system which can take hours. My advice is to say no when it first prompts you and once everything else is settled in go ahead and enable Time Machine from system preferences. This will prevent you from having both spotlight and Time Machine trying to read your system drives at the same time (something you really don’t want to deal with, trust me).