Customer Reviews

Degunking Your Mac

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The source of "gunk" is the way users use their Mac--not the machinery itself. But, a lot of Mac users don't think their machines have gunk. Author Joli Ballew has done an outstanding job of putting together a book that shows you how to keep your Mac running at tip-top speed as long as possible and to make you more productive along the way.

Ballew begins by helping you to determine whether your Mac is really gunked up. Next, the author introduces a proven 12-step program to degunking success--a program that can really and truly get your Mac performing like new again. Then, she explains how to get rid of- or degunking files that shouldn't be in your Mac. The author continues by showing you how to locate and get rid of unwanted applications, including beta applications, unnecessary programs and unnecessary Mac OS X applications. In addition, the author next covers Tiger's new Spotlight feature, including how you can use it to organize data and create Smart folders. She also focuses on getting you working more efficiently by personalizing what you access every day. The author next shows you how to degunk the Dashboard. Next, the author shows you how to degunk new features, so that they don't drive you crazy. Then, she shows you how to manage or eliminate your font gunk. Ballew continues with a discussion of how to degunk your iPod. Next, the author shows you how to prevent spam first, keep what you do get under control, and formulate a plan for reducing or eliminating spam altogether. Then, she covers e-mail housecleaning in more detail, and how to clean up and organize your legitimate mail with spam that gets through your defenses. In addition, Ballew continues by discussing how you can degunk the startup process and optimize the hard drive, so that your Mac runs as efficiently as possible. Next, she explores Software Update; as well as, available software upgrades. Then, she introduces you to the different types of hardware you can acquire to beef up your system. The author then shows you what tools are available to help you maintain your Mac and what tools can be used to search for, find, and fix errors with hard disks, permissions, and similar issues. She then shows you how important it is to secure your Mac and what built-in and third-party utilities and software are available to you. Next, she covers how to back up data, with emphasis on creating a backup strategy and sticking to it. Finally, she shows you how to get started with Automator.

With the preceding in mind, the author has done an excellent job of showing you how to follow the basic steps outlined in this book on a regular basis, with the results of giving yourself an insurance policy and saving yourself from encountering aggravation down the road. So, the belief here is that degunking your Mac will make your time on your computer more efficient, more productive, and maybe even more enjoyable.

I reviewed a previous edition about a year ago. It was pretty good, but I thought some of the degunking advice/suggestions/techniques were a bit odd. I gave the book to a non-technical family member, who loved it. She passed it on to another family member who also loved it. I lost track of it after that.

So, looking at the book through a non-technical lens, this is a great book to help keep your Mac up and running smoothly. There is lots of good advice around the various features and applications you would normally use. For example; How to keep email spam to a minimum; How to find extra disk space if you're running low; How to keep the Dashboard cleaned up. This book also serves as a great way to explore and understand the various features provided by your Mac and the included applications. It also suggests quite a few 3rd party applications (free or relatively inexpensive) to assist you with the "degunking" tasks.

I guess to sum it up; this isn't exactly for the Slashdot crowd. However, if you're a new Mac user, a home user, or a non-technical user (i.e. no one politely refers to you as a computer geek) this should at least be on your "flip-through-it-at-the-book-store" list. For me, I will be sending it off to a family member. Based on prior experience, they're going to love it.

My new iBook G4 is already gunked up, so I am finding the book a treasure trove of help! The book's beginning pages I found long and redundant; I just wanted to get on with the degunking. The most important message for me at the start was to degunk in the order the book outlines. It has taught me much about what unnecessary items (for me) come loaded onto the Mac at purchase, i.e., foreign languages & fonts I can't use. As a long-time Mac user, I feel qualified to highly recommend the book for its orderly presentation, user friendliness and practical matters. In fact, I'll try to go through it again over time to see what else might have sneaked into my Mac.
M. Thoelecke

I liked the first edition and there is a lot more to find in this book. In fact I would say that this book has easily doubled in size. New topics include Dashboard and Spotlight. But the original material about killing spam, optimizing your applications, getting the garbage off your drive and many others remain. There is even material about cleaning up your iPod.

An excellent resource for any full-time Macintosh user.

I have not read this book, however I do read reviews to help me decide whether to buy, and I feel compelled to temper another reviewer's one-star review by pointing out errors in the review itself.

Steve Scholnick's review states that Mac OS X uses a file's resource fork rather than its filename extension to determine what application to use to open a file. While this used to be true, filename extensions are now relied on to determine the opening application. Mac OS X does have the ability to HIDE filename extensions, which may make it seem that they are not necessary, but they are. (Try sending a file without a visible filename extension as an email attachment to a Windows or another Mac OS X user and ask them what happens).

He also states that CuteFTP is a Windows-only FTP client. Actually, a quick check of a Macintosh shareware website reveals that a Mac version has been available since 2003.

His final comment about there not being the need to run defragmenting software against a Mac OS X hard drive is correct. Mac OS X has defrag routines built in that run in the background and when new software is installed.

I wish I could submit this review without a rating, since I haven't read the book. I'll give it three stars, being the closest thing to a neutral rating as I can manage.

If you are having troubles with a slow Mac, you are finding your Macintosh is file system unmanageable, or are having virus problems then you will want to take a look at this book. The book is filled with practical, introductory level, advice for how to clean, and more importantly, organize and maintain your Macintosh. There are lots of good suggestions. Even if you think you know the Mac well you will likely find some references to applications and extensions you haven't seen before.

I recommend this book for anyone using the Mac full time. The content is unique and the advice is practical. Though I would certainly look the table of contents over to make sure that you will get enough out of it to justify the purchase.

A Mac computer, like all computers, will begin to slow down over time. This the natural result of the computer hard drive being loaded down with the cyberspace debrie that inevitably accumulates as the result of unused applications, bloated fonts, unread emails, etc. Mac expert Joli Ballew shows any Mac user how to quickly and easily "degunk" their computer, cleaning out whatever is reducing the efficiency of their computer and also making their computer secure from hackers and viruses. Degunking Your Mac shows how to streamline file systems to work faster and more efficiently; reduce hard drive clutter (including uninstalled programs); clean out spy ware and adware; simplify the Mac setup to boot quickly and cleanly; degunk email and reducing, even eliminating spam; tweak and upgrade applications so they no longer crash. If you own a Mac and feel that it is not operating at peak efficiency and speed, then give a careful reading to Degunking Your Mac with particular attention to it's 12-Step Degunking Program for obtaining and maintaining optimal operations!

There are plenty of books and television shows on keeping your home, life, etc organized, why not a book on how to keep your Mac organized? That's exactly what this book sets out to do. While quite a bit of the information could be categorized as common sense, there are still a lot of useful tips and suggestions that will help you "degunk".

The author points out that a lot of the ideas behind keeping your computer "gunk-free" have less to do with technology and more to do with psychology. I.e. You have to want to keep your computer "degunked". The basic idea is this: a well organized Mac runs better and faster than one full of "gunk".

There are great suggestions on how to free up disk space, how to deal with spam, and why or when to add hardware. However, the text occasionally seems to lack a bit of polish and a few suggestions seemed a touch odd to me. For example, the suggestion, "If you use an iPod regularly, create a folder on your desktop (or an alias to your Music or iTunes folder) so that you can access those files quickly."

Overall, the book is a great idea - with plenty of room for future editions to build on the "degunking" process. If you are looking for ideas to help you organize and "degunk" your Mac, I'd definitely give it a look.

"Degunking Your Mac" is an excellent book for beginning to intermediate users who want to tune-up and clean up their Macintosh. The book is well organized, but not dense. Miss Ballew takes time to discuss topics in clear and non-technical language with a dash of wit. The result is a computer book that novices should find interesting and fun, instead of scary, jargony, and off-putting.

My two favorite chapters in "Degunking Your Mac" are chapters 9 (Fonts) and 19 (Automator). Anyone who has used a Mac has encountered issues with fonts, and chapter 9 had excellent solutions for these common headaches. Chapter 19 is the best beginner's introduction to Automator I've read in a book so far. It is a brief chapter, but introduces Apple's new automation utility in clear English.

"Degunking Your Mac" is a clear and solid manual for beginning and intermediate users. My only quibble with the book is that it may have little new information to an Advanced Macintosh user.

OS 10.4 seeks to be all things to all men, thus it contains many MB of no possible use to most users. It needs to include a purging program to remove trash. Fonts in foreign languages, translations (how many people in the US want to convert classical Chinese to simplified Chinesw), printer drivers for printers that the user doesn't have consume a great deal of space. This book needs to be far more aggressive.