A couple of Special Offers

2010-08-25T17:35:50+01:00

Suffolk MUG have passed on the following offers, so if anyone is interested take note. If you would like to see what these applications do, check the web sites: DiskTools Pro http://www.macwareinc.com/products/DiskToolsPro/overview.html Discount Code: MUGDTP50 Saves 50% on retail price, reducing $79.99 to $39.99 MacTuneUp http://www.macwareinc.com/products/MacTuneUp/overview.html Discount Code: MUGMTU10 Saves $10 on retail price, reducing $34.99 to $24.99 The discount offers expire on OCTOBER 31ST 2010

Re: A couple of Special Offers

2010-08-25T19:53:33+01:00

DiskTools Pro http://www.macwareinc.com/products/DiskToolsPro/overview.html MacTuneUp http://www.macwareinc.com/products/MacTuneUp/overview.html

Re: A couple of Special Offers

2010-08-29T21:33:30+01:00

Does anyone have any experience of Mac Tuneup - one of the products on discount? My oldish iMac G5 running 10.4 is a bit unstable and can be slow and I wondered whether this product might improve these sort of issues.

Re: A couple of Special Offers

2010-08-30T12:35:04+01:00

Hi David, I've not had reason to use these utilities, but they are excellent to check the condition of your drive blocks and reallocate them if necessary. Before you spend money, look at "drive" slowness these ways: - are you running too many apps for the available RAM? Ram to disk and back transfers are SLOW! - are you running with too little free drive space? 10% - 15% of capacity is normally required. - are you running a Spotlight database renewal? Is it healthy? Should you create a new one? - are you running TimeMachine backups too frequently (hugely profitable for Drive suppliers!) - is your OS clogged with bloated or corrupt caches? Use Safe Boot and/or Onyx (judiciously) to clear these - corrupt fonts can cause slow downs and freezes. Start by removing old font caches, then check fonts in use with FontBook validation - check Activity Monitor to see whether a program bug is hogging processor capacity. If so, quit that process and try again. Should these issues not prove to be the problem, then suspect the drive. Note that SMART status -- if available -- may not give much warning of imminent failure. In any case, make sure you have really good backups: Clones, Time Machine, cd/dvd etc. I have just spoken with someone who may have lost a load of precious family photos because they weren't backed up properly. If drive reads and writes aren't running perfectly there is a real risk of data corruption. Changing a drive, even on a G5, shouldn't be too awful to contemplate, try iFixit teardowns (other similar sites are around). iFixit Teardowns (and do try some good Irish stew!)

Re: A couple of Special Offers

2010-09-03T21:57:32+01:00

Wow! -thanks Euan- running through that lot will keep me quiet for a long time. I can see why companies develop these programmes for those of us that hesitate to tread in areas beyond our comfort zone! I do back up using Time Machine so felt good about that but probably am running it too frequently for the amount the G5 is used. Will look into this. Am still tempted by Mac Tuneup!! Irish Stew? - not in this weather!