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Tips and tricks to help you use your Macintosh |
2. Random Access Memory (RAM). Upgrade to at least 96 megabytes total of RAM. Your iMac comes with 32 megabytes of RAM. It’s not enough. The basic operating system takes from 20 to 40 megabytes all by itself, depending on what desktop extensions you have added and what else you have open. For example, my OS 8.6 operating system is using 40.1 megabytes of RAM as I write. I also have the Appleworks word processing application open to write this article, and Appleworks is taking another 9.8 megabytes, for a total of 49.9 MB of RAM. If I had only 32 megabytes of RAM, I couldn’t even have opened Appleworks without resorting to Virtual Memory. I recommend blowing about $150 and adding at least a 64 megabyte RAM upgrade, giving you a total of 96 MB. You will never regret it. Where are all those application programs and games that came with the iMac? Your new iMac comes with lots of built-in productivity software (Appleworks, Quicken, FaxStf, etc.), games (Nanosaur, Crop Circles, Gopher Golf, etc.), and control panels that allow you to customize the way your computer looks and works. But where are they? How do you find what you need? Where is it? The short answer is that everything is on the Hard Disk, which you open by double-clicking the Icon in the top right hand corner of your Mac display. Now - a little trick to make it much, much easier to find everything. After you have opened your Hard Disk by double-clicking it, look at the top left side of your display where it says “View” in the Menu Bar, just to the right of “File” and “Edit”. Click on the word “View” and select “as list” by dragging the mouse pointer onto it and releasing the mouse button. Bingo! That confusing mess of unsorted Icons in the Hard Disk window resolves itself into a neat, alphabetically arranged list with little grey triangles on the left margin, beside each folder. Click on one of those little triangles, and it opens the folder into another alphabetical list of everything inside the folder. Anything with a grey triangle to the left is a folder with something inside it. Just click the triangle to see what’s inside. Your folders are arranged like one of those Russian Doll toys, with folders inside folders inside folders. Opening the programs. Start working your way through the folders by clicking the triangles, and pretty soon you’ll find everything. You may not know what it is, but at least you’ll know where it is. Read the “Read me’s” as you come to them by double-clicking their icons. They tell you what the programs are, and other important information. You can open (or “launch”) almost anything by double-clicking on it. I got it open. Now, how do I close it? No problem, Señor. On the top left hand corner of (almost) every “window” you open there is a little square box called the “close box”. Just move the tip of the mouse pointer onto that box and click it once. That closes the window. However, it does not quit the program, if what you opened was a program. To quit an open program (such as Appleworks or Quicken), either select “Quit”, which is always the bottom item in the “File” menu, or better still, get used to using the keyboard shortcut, Command>Q. That is, hold down the Command key (the one beside the spacebar with the picture of an apple on it) and, while continuing to hold down the Command Key, press the “Q” (for “Quit”) key. Poof! The program disappears. Incidentally, if the window you have opened doesn’t have a ”Close box”, or if the Menu Bar is not visible, as in most games, choosing Command+Quit is how you return to the Finder. O.K. I found it. What is it? As you work your way through the folders on your Hard Disk, you will come to all sorts of programs. (Hint - programs usually have a colored Icon instead of a grey folder.) So, what are they? There are two ways to get information (other than asking someone who already knows, or reading one of the excellent books such as “The little iMac book” by Robin Williams, or “iMac’s for Dummies” by David Pogue). Way # 1. Select the Icon by clicking on it ONCE. Not twice, we don’t want to open it just now. The Icon and the description to the right of it will darken or “highlight” to indicate it has been “selected”. Now, from the “File” menu, choose “get info” > “general information” by dragging the mouse pointer down to the “get info” item, and then across to the right onto “general information”. When “general information” is highlighted, release the mouse button, and a window will appear with information about the Icon you have selected. This information is generic, and may or may not be very helpful, depending on what you wanted to know. Way # 2. For more specific and detailed information, Open the program by double clicking it’s Icon, and then, after the program is open, choose help from the Menu Bar at the top of your display, or by pressing the “help” key over by the numeric keypad on the right of your keyboard. This should give you contextual help for the program you have opened. Scroll through the list to find what you are looking for, and then click the item you are interested in to open it, and read the information or follow the directions. |