Ten things to do for Mom's Mac this Thanksgiving

Since you'll no doubt be freeloading on Mom's yummy Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, it's only right that you should fix her computer, right? Download Squad has posted up full instructions for the PC folks, and I thought I'd chime in with the Mac side of the force. So while everyone is sitting on the couch staring at the TV, you can squirrel yourself away in the computer nook getting the family Mac in tip-top shape (and be quite the hero).

First, if she doesn't have one, buy her a Mac. My suggestion is an iMac because it's just the right blend of computer, entertainment center, and communications device. It also looks might cool and comes with almost everything she'll need inside. Also, the likelihood of having to fix it next year will be pretty slim (as opposed to that 1999 vintage Dell she's been using).
Backup time! There are a lot of ways to do this. If she has a .Mac account, I'd say use Backup.app judiciously. I set up my wife's iBook to back up her Keychain and settings nightly, Mail messages and critical docs weekly, and all Home files monthly. There's also Carbon Copy Cloner, which allows you to make a total copy of her hard drive. Just make sure you have another drive handy (a big old external FireWire drive is best). And Apple has some great tips and techniques for backup as well, though they require some heavy lifting in some cases.
About everyone I know uses Cocktail on a regular basis to do stuff that makes your Mac happy. Sure, it's a GUI front-end for the *NIX commands you could do in Terminal... But I don't think Mom cares for all that CLI business. Set it up using the Pilot portion of the app to quietly optimize the Mac on a regular basis.
Defrag her drive. Ha, just kidding. Since Panther, OS X has included a sort of on-the-fly defrag utility that runs silently in the background when needed. It's not optimal for large defrags, or huge files, but unless Mom's working on cutting a major motion picture, I doubt that's an issue.
OK, if you really want to defrag, or just run some pretty extensive diagnostics, there's always the excellent app TechTool from Micromat. In fact, if the Mac purchased at any point had AppleCare, but the OS had been upgraded to Tiger, you should NOT use the "free" version of TechTool that comes with AppleCare. That is, if the version of TechTool you're using isn't the most up-to-date, you could actually fry the machine...
Install anti-virus software. ClamXav is free and quite excellent in this regard. Sure, you could roll your eyes when the subject of virii comes up, but I find it's better to install peace of mind than give a piece of mind.
Make her Safari experience better by installing Saft. If you need to sell her on it, brush up on C.K.'s glowing endorsement.
Run all those updates she's been putting off. Then backup (again if you're going chronologically) once you're sure everything is working fine. Why not backup after updates? Let's just say I've had bad things happen in the past. Also, I've noticed Apple tends to roll out updates about an hour before the tech support crew goes home for the weekend...
Use Allume's Spring Cleaning to clear out unused apps, file duplicates, and setup a file restoration scheme. Spring Cleaning automates what can be a tedious process (though almost everything it does can be done manually).
Run Disk Utility. Make sure S.M.A.R.T. status is verified (if not, get that machine to a shop fast, the drive is going to fail soon). Run the permissions repairs. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Remember to keep it simple. As easy as the Mac is to use, there's a lot of "stuff" you can do with it. Things like QuickSilver, Growl, and such are great for power users, but you have to ease into them as an average user. Making things "just work" is pretty good for most.

Oh, and you can always make sure her RSS screen saver is set to TUAW, so she can start becoming a power user!

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Source: http://www.macfixit.com/

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Since you'll no doubt be freeloading on Mom's yummy Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, it's only right that you should fix her computer, right?...

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Richard Smith

Off topic I know, but when, oh when, will even tech savvy writers stop using the non existant 'virii' as the plural of virus? The plural of 'virus' is 'viruses'. Don't believe me? Read this article: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

November 24 2005 at 3:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

meatmcguffin

Funny you should mention backups - superduper was upgraded to 2.0 today. Very awesome backup app with a damn handy smart backup function. shirt-pocket.com (not an employee, just a happy customer)

November 23 2005 at 6:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

As much as I love it, I wouldn't recommend installing saft on a non-techie's computer. If safari is updated (which some people do almost without meaning to when software update pops up), saft will display an error message every time the new safari is opened - or worse, freeze it. And the process of getting and installing a new saft update is a little arcane (bad google ranking, passwords, etc.)

November 23 2005 at 4:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply