Gadget: Make Your Macbook Air Faster and Optimized

Posted by andrew wise
February 23, 2008

Being a recent Macbook Air owner, I have gone through a number of steps to optimize my Macbook Air and ensure its running its best.

So here are the steps I took to optimize my Macbook Air for optimal performance:

Monolingual is a freeware app that deletes all those other pesky languages from your Mac. I deleted the languages, and all of the input menu options.

Delete all of the applications you most likely won’t use on your Macbook Air: I deleted iMovie, and Grapher (76mb). You might want to also delete iPhoto (150mb), iChat (109mb), Safari (50mb).

Disable Bluetooth, Sharing, and any other feature you don’t plan to use

Remove all items from your desktop. If there are any files on your desktop, it slows down the computer everytime it has to load each of those files.

I have yet to get a full reading on the battery life as I have been using an EVDO card on the laptop, and haven’t been completely away from a power source yet. As for those people claiming that EVDO USB cards do not fit, they definitely do fit, and work perfectly even when placed on a desk. Having a fast wireless connection is definitely a necessity for the Macbook Air, as when things get slow, it gets really, really annoying, so make sure to invest in some 802.11n hardware.

Have any other tips for speeding up your Macbook Air?

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Information: February 23rd, 2008

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Categories and Tags: Gadget; apple, laptop, macbook, macbook air

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Reader Comments

Comment Number:: 1
Written by:: Twitter Response from @andrewwise « TweetTrack
Posted on:: February 23, 2008 at 1:19 am

[...] February 23, 2008 New blog post: Gadget: Make Your Macbook Air Faster and Optimized http://andrewswise.com/gadget-make-your-macbook-air-faster-and-optimized/ [...]

Comment Number:: 2
Written by:: Gadget: Make Your Macbook Air Faster and Optimized | Macbook Air Blog
Posted on:: February 23, 2008 at 2:06 am

[...] Make Your Macbook Air Faster and Optimized macbook air Add comments GadgetManiac wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptHaving a fast wireless connection is [...]

Comment Number:: 3
Written by:: daniel
Posted on:: February 23, 2008 at 2:13 am

new processor. more ram.

but seriously now,
disable startup apps that you don’t need (look in sys preferences).
get the new firefox 3 beta, less memory leaks, and super fast because of the move to cairo. (http://cairographics.org/)

if paranoid (but generally good to know):
if things are running slow, that probably means you are running low on memory, so keep your Activity Monitor on (in Applications/Utilities) and you can monitor all the open processes/applications and their cpu intake, RAM usage, etc.

some people will tell you to get Cocktail, Onyx, or other maintenance programs to run periodically. Mac OS X automatically runs these maintenance scripts, and programs like these have a reputation of causing problems.

thats about all i can think of….

Comment Number:: 4
Written by:: andrew wise
Posted on:: February 23, 2008 at 3:13 pm

that’s a good point — i forgot about disabling startup apps

i already have firefox 3 installed

and the funny thing about activity monitor is that it seems to use a lot of system resources …lol

Comment Number:: 5
Written by:: Brad Nelson
Posted on:: March 1, 2008 at 2:44 pm

One more GREAT app is iFreeMem (http://activata.co.uk/ifreemem/). It will free up your RAM being “reserved” for previously open applications or hidden apps hogging it. Whenever my system starts to feel like it is running slowly I run this and it is like I have rebooted but in about 20sec, not 3 minutes.

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