This article will help you to diagnose common problems such as lack of maintenance, permissions conflicts and Hard Drive glitches that cause your Mac to run slowly.

There are two main routes to take to make your Mac as lean and mean as it was when you bought it (or even more so!)—hardware upgrades and software maintenance. One of the easiest things to do is to purchase additional RAM. As a rule, I say you can never have too much RAM. If you don't have at least 256 MB of RAM, you should immediately upgrade. In addition to RAM, you should consider getting a faster/larger hard drive, or video card. If your Mac is more than four years old, however, you might want to consider purchasing a new one.

The following are essential utilities for keeping your Mac running smoothly (for more information on what they do, click here). (Click the links to go to their download sites):

• Anacron
• Mac Sweeper
• Macaroni
• MacJanitor
• Delocalizer

Running the Above Programs

Anacron is a great utility for making sure regular maintenance routines for Mac OS X are run, even if your computer was off when they were supposed to run. Since it's free, and requires very little configuration, it is one of the two utilities I recommend for all Macs.

Mac Sweeper is another free utility for running regular maintenance, although you must manually run this program's routines once a week or month (depending on your computer usage). One good thing about this utility, though, is that you can click the 'Run Everything' button under the 'Batch' tab, and it will run every single maintenance routine your Mac needs to run; after you do this, restart your Mac.

Macaroni costs less than $10, but allows you to run all the Mac Sweeper maintenance tasks automatically; it's kind of like combining both Anacron and Mac Sweeper, but Macaroni is easier to configure and use than both, and will make sure all the important maintenance tasks are run when the should be.

MacJanitor runs maintenance tasks, is free, and is the easiest of these utilities to use; however, you must manually open the program and run the tasks, and it only does three of the maintenance routines. If you would like to go this route, you will also have to use Apple's built-in Disk Utility to repair permissions.

Delocalizer is a free utility that allows you to delete unused 'localization' files—files that allow your Mac to operate in many different languages; if you only live in one country and speak one language, you can free up a lot of hard drive space (sometimes more than 1 GB!) by deleting languages you don't use. Macaroni also performs this task.

Disk Utility comes installed on Mac OS 10.3 or later, and allows you to verify your hard disk or repair permissions by clicking on your hard drive and then clicking on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button.

Every Mac user should make sure he runs three basic maintenance tasks:

1. 'Cron' scripts: Mac OS X is a UNIX operating system, and there are 'cron' scripts that clean up messy log files, optimize certain parts of the system, and accounts for user activity. There are three tasks - one that should be run daily, one weekly and one monthly. Anacron, Mac Sweeper, Macaroni and MacJanitor all perform this task.
2. Optimize Prebindings: Every time you install an application in Mac OS X, the installer will finish the installation by 'optimizing your system;' this is a fancy name for optimizing prebindings. Doing so will speed up application start times and keep things running smoothly. Macaroni and Mac Sweeper both do this.
3. Repair Permissions: Because Mac OS X allows multiple user accounts, and because OS X has UNIX underpinnings, file 'permissions' can become messed up sometimes, especially if you have many different users on your computer, and they use the same programs. Sometimes, really weird things can happen as a result of your permissions being messed up, and this can also slow down your computer. Mac Sweeper, Macaroni and Disk Utility perform this task.

One last thing you can do that will not necessarily speed up your Mac, but will free up a considerable amount of hard drive space, is to erase the thousands of foreign language files that are installed with every application and utility on your computer. Sometimes, this can free up more than a gigabyte of hard drive space! Use Macaroni or Delocalizer to do this.

Ways to Keep Your Mac Running Fast

In addition to using the above programs, you should keep in mind a few important things while using your computer to check email, install programs, browse the Internet or chat:

1. Never open any attachments on emails that either you don't know who they're from or you don't already know what is in the attachment. Some malicious software can even make an email look like it was sent to you from a friend or relative! Better to be safe than sorry.
2. When installing new software, ALWAYS watch the installer and make sure you know what's being installed. Some programs will ask you if they can install additional software. This additional software is often unnecessary and can cause problems on your computer.
3. Don't use Internet Explorer. It is not being updated or supported for the Mac anymore. Use Safari or FireFox instead; these browsers are faster, offer more advanced features, and are more secure than Internet Explorer. (Plus, Safari is just darn cooler!).
4. If you chat, don't click on links sent to you by friends unless you are absolutely sure your friend intended to send you the link!
5. Upgrade your computer's RAM to at least 256 MB (Click on the Apple Logo (top right of the screen) and choose "About This Mac" to see how much you currently have). The more RAM you have, the less your computer will have to access the hard drive to run programs (especially if you run more than one program at a time!).
6. Make sure you have about 10-20% of your hard drive empty. Mac OS X automatically defragments most of your hard drive files, but it needs some free space so it can do this; plus, your computer will swap files with your RAM and hard drive to make certain programs run faster, so you need some free space for that. If you have a 60 GB hard drive and it's almost full, you should consider getting a new drive; larger, faster drives can be very inexpensive when on sale at retailers such as Best Buy, CompUSA, Fry's and others.
7. Keep your computer clean; if you have never opened your desktop computer and cleaned the dust from the inside, you should do so—you might be surprised at how much dust you find! You can use a Shop Vac and soft brush (keep static away, though!) or a can of compressed air (a few bucks at a computer store) to get rid of all the dust bunnies. Dust can cause a LOT of problems with a computer! Click here for tips for cleaning iMacs, flat screen LCDs, iPods, and other Macs.