Hiya Davo

At 12:03 PM +0100 01/01/11, Þorvarður Davíðsson wrote:
>On 30.12.2010, at 01:21, Brian Ferguson wrote:
>
>  >> 1) The startup process is very slow. I press 
>the power button and Š nothing happens. After 7 
>seconds I hear a low click and then a loud 
>chime. It takes 55 seconds until I see the 
>Desktop. I guess this is normal because I have 
>500 GB hard disk and it is nearly full (I always 
>try to keep about 20% free, now I have 50 GB 
>available). Besides I am running MaxMenus which 
>always need some time to load as well as a few 
>menu bar applications. The Dock is also full (= 
>86 applications and folders, is that perhaps too 
>much?).

Might I suggest you try "Cocktail.app" -- very 
low cost. You can use it to poke about and 
straighten out all kinds of things. I have found 
it very effective. it includes repair 
permissions/repair disk -- I presume it uses Disk 
Utility for that part of its work, but I don't 
know. I start with that in Cocktail.app, then 
slash about with the app, emptying caches and 
whatnot (I actually don't understand most of what 
I am doing, but it feels good), then I do the 
repair permissions/repair disk thing again, then 
restart the computer. Half of what I do probably 
makes no difference, but it makes me feel as 
though I have done something and that everything 
is good as a result, and that's the main thing! 
:D

When I say "smashing at things", just the other 
day I discovered Cocktail.app had an option for 
removing unused localizations. The little red 
bloke with the pointy tail and the red hot poker 
was whispering in my ear, so I told it to let 
rip! It took about an hour and a half! But in the 
end, a lot of disk space was freed up. It might 
launch faster, I didn't time it. I should have. 
But I was succumbing to temptation, not running a 
reasoned experiment! Like eating chocolate.

>  > I haven't checked Permissions lately, but 
>there was a time when a multitude of them were 
>'repaired' only to return. As advised by others 
>more knowledgeable than I, 'let it be'.
>
>I started up from another disk today and 
>"repaired" them. As I ran Disk Utility 
>immediately again afterwards they were all back 
>again...

These would be the ones that don't matter, 
according to Apple, I suspect. I've just learnt 
to ignore them.

>  > No wonder it's slow. Far too little space; no, far too much garbage.
>>  I suggest you get an external FireWire HD and 
>>transfer files to there and use it for backup.
>
>I guess I could transfer most of the videos, they take up 200 GB on disk.

I'm not sure how far I go along with the "too 
much stuff on the HD" thing. These things are 
designed to do the work! Yes, there must be 
available space on the HD for the machine to 
undertake work in, but apart from that, it should 
be able to carry the load. With 500GB, I would be 
looking at 50-100GB space, I suppose. But 50GB 
should be plenty -- I haven't heard that the 
machine wants a percentage of space, I've just 
heard that it needs bit of space to work in.

On the other hand, I probably would be looking at 
something like 70-80GB if I had a 500GB HD built 
in. BUT -- what does Apple say about it?

I also remember fiddling with my wife's iMac back 
couple of years. She does movies, and since I was 
archiving material for her, I opened a couple of 
movies in Final Cut Pro. it seems that you need 
horrendous amounts of free space for Final Cut 
Pro to work in.

I have to say I have 200GB in my MacBook, but it 
is a 7200 rpm model, which is inherently faster 
than the 5400 rpm models. Except that your bus is 
much faster than mine. And so on! I have it 
divided my HD into two partitions -- 60 GB for 
the OS and a few bits and pieces, of which 17 GB 
is free, and 140 GB for everything else (I call 
it "Work", but being a Mac, it is really "Play", 
of course!), of which 43 GB is currently free. I 
was down to actually running out of space on the 
Work partition, then dug around and found I had 
duplicated my iPhoto libraries (I run multiple 
libraries for multiple subjects using iPhoto 
Buddy) in addition to having a few libraries 
triplicated. I spent a happy hour or five making 
sure the current libraries contain all the photos 
I want in them, then binning the duplicates, 
leading to the current plethora of open space. Of 
course, those libaries are all backed up multiple 
times on other HDs.

I still have the FW 500GB HD La Cie, designed 
specifically for the Mac mini (same profile so 
they make a neat stack -- but not at my place 
because I don't have the Mac mini any longer) 
sitting beside my 13" MacBook and plugged into 
both FW and USB2 on the MacBook because in 
addition to making a wonderful, near silent 
auxiliary and b/u disk although well cooled, it 
also provides extra sockets for both. Well worth 
a look.

I have migrated to a pocket-sized WD USB2 500GB 
HD for general back-up and for taking with me 
when I go aroaming with the MacBook.

For back-up, I am using (on the advice of 
someone(s) on this list) Carbon Copy Cloner which 
is very good, easy enough for a mentally clapped 
out old wreck like me to learn to use, and is 
very economical to purchase too. I have divided 
it into two partitions to match the partitions on 
the main disk. I have proved it by setting up and 
using a cloned start-up partition on the WD and 
by swapping material back and forth among two 
computes via it, so I can heartily recommend it.

>  >> I have been using Spell Catcher X 10.3.7 
>(<http://www.rainmakerinc.com/>) for some time 
>and I suspect this software to be responsible 
>for some instability I have been experiencing 
>lately.
>>>
>  >> Is anybody here using Spell Catcher X?

Tested Spell Catcher the other day. Can't see any 
advantage over the standard OS X spell checker -- 
but then, I'm using only English (plus Motu and 
Tok Pisin -- now in creole mode, c/f Pinker -- 
but nobody has dictionaries for them).

>I do. I was just testing Spell Catcher X and I 
>wanted to see if it has changed much since I 
>used it last time. I used it under System 7 and 
>8.

...

>  > But better still, buy for UD$15 this PDF:
>>
>  > "Take Control of Exploring & Customising Snow 
>Leopard from Take Control" from Tidbits.com.

That sounds like a good idea.

>  > Then follows a detailed method of setting-up 
>your own internal spell checker, customised for 
>your language too.
>
>I've always wanted to set up my own (Icelandic) spell checker. :-)

As long as you don't break the bank doing it! ;-) 
(OT political comment: Hurrah for Iceland 
refusing to accept the "Sovereign debt" crap to 
bail out the mess made by a bunch of foreign 
speculators who sh*t in the nest then flew the 
coop when the lice infestation set in. Hang in 
there! If everyone refuses to accept that 
nonsense, the speculation will necessarily 
collapse and we can get on with honest business 
and government -- to say nothing of having secure 
superannuation investments and something called 
"a life".)

Best regards

Geoffrey Heard
The Ad-Doctor-Online
http://www.ad-doctor-online.com