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• Remember "Do." I use that abbreviation to remember "Dock Once." In other words, whenever I click on an icon located on my Mac's dock, I only need to click once. To open a file or folder located elsewhere on the machine, I need to click twice. But remember the simple word, "Do." That's your cue to only click an icon on the dock once.
• You've tossed away a file and yet the Trash won't delete it. Try this. After throwing away a file, try closing the program you were using to view it. For example, if I trash a TextEdit file but my I keep getting a message telling me that the file is in use, I simply quit TextEdit and I should be able to empty the Trash. Once in a blue moon you may have to restart your machine if the technique mentioned above fails to work.
• There are multiple ways to quit a program. You can hold down the Command button and then type a "q." You can click on the program's name up on the left-hand side of the menu bar. In the drop-down menu, click on Quit (name of program). You can hold your left mouse button down on an icon on the dock and in the small menu, click Quit.
• Say you've got a JPEG or GIF (photo or graphic) that you want to save as an Adobe Acrobat Reader file (with the suffix .pdf). Open the JPEG or GIF in the program, Preview, located in your Applications folder. Then click on File--> Save As. Look down below in the box that opens and you'll be able to change the JPEG or GIF to a .pdf file or a number of other file types.
• Do I need to buy Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac? I get asked that question a lot. Most people can get buy using Neo Office (free), Open Office (free), IBM Lotus Symphony (free), or Pages ($79 from Apple's online store, but less expensive if purchased from Amazon.com or other sources). Pages is the word processor that's part of Apple's iWork suite. All of these programs allow you to save (sometimes called "Export") word processing documents as Word files. Now, there are exceptions. If you do extremely elaborate Word documents with multiple tables and templates, you probably should use Microsoft Word. If you need Excel or PowerPoint, all of the programs mentioned provide comparable applications.
• My Web pages load slowly. How can I speed them up? One of the easiest ways to speed up Web pages is to use OpenDNS or the new Google DNS announced in December 2009. Google Public DNS

DNS stands for domain name server. Every time you visit a Web site, your computer browser looks up the site's DNS (sort of like the Internet's phone book). Your Internet Service Provider (the company that provides your Internet service) may not offer the fastest DNS capability.

So switching to OpenDNS or Google's DNS might speed things up.

Setting up your Mac to use OpenDNS (Instructions for Mac OS X Leopard can be used to configure Snow Leopard).

Setting up your Mac to use Google Public DNS

If you've got a wireless router, it might make sense to set up the router so it uses OpenDNS or GoogleDSN. That way, any time your Mac connects to the Internet using a wireless signal, it will use one of those two services to load Web pages.

If you use an Apple Airport, here's the OpenDNS page with details on how to set it up so you connect to OpenDNS rather than your ISP when viewing the Web: Setting up Apple Airport to use OpenDNS

Happy Mac Computing!




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