How To Speed Up Leopard

Here are some ways to speed up Leopard (OSX 10.5) and your use of it.

Get rid of the 3D dock.

It's not that hard to get rid of the 3D dock. Just open the terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app) and type:


defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock


To turn it into the 3D dock again, use:


defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO; killall Dock



Clean up the Desktop

Okay, you've probably heard of this so many times, you're sick of it. However, this holds true. You NEED to keep your desktop clean. However, if you can't seem to keep your desktop icons less than 14, then you might want to turn off the quick view feature. To do that, click on the desktop (to make it active) and hit Cmd-J to open the view options window. Then, uncheck the "Show icon preview" checkbox. This will speed it up quite a bit.


Clean up your login items.

This one may not help you out much. However, it's worth a shot. Go to System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items. Make sure that you want everything in there to be there.


Change mail checking frequency.

This one is if you need to squeeze out every drop of speed. Go to Mail and hit Cmd-,. Then, go to the General tab and change the checking frequency to either 15-30 minutes, or never.


Shrink your spotlight possibilities.

Go to System Preferences>Spotlight. Uncheck any of the spotlight searches that you don't use. Don't look for fonts? Get rid of it. Don't look for contacts? Get rid of those also.


Memorize the shortcuts

This one is more for the user than the computer. If you really want to speed up your computer experience, memorize the keyboard shortcuts! Cut=Cmd-X. Save=Cmd-S. Sleep=Power_Button+S. You get the idea. If you don't know the codes, use this picture as a reference.




Well, that's all for now. Have a nice day! If you have anything to add, leave a comment!