Your mac was fast when you first got it.  Now, a few months later, your mac is slow and needs a jump start.  There a four steps you can do to get your mac back in the fast lane.

1.  Unplug any new peripherals one by one.  Unplug your iPhone, printer, or other USB or firewire device one by one to see if your mac is faster after each removal.  Sometimes, a usb or firewire cable can fail and cause a slow computer.
2.  Remove any new software.  If you just installed Norton for mac or some other multi-layered software, and then your computer slowed down right after, get rid of it.  It can be the culprit.
3.  Remove any unnecessary loading programs.  You might need all your programs, but you certainly don’t need them all to load at startup which can definitely slow down your mac.  Press and hold the shift key after logging in to temporarily disable all programs from loading at login.  If you computer seems to have more pep, then you’ll need to isolate the slow starting program and remove it.
4.  Your hard drive might be failing.  To check this out, go to Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities folder and select your disk and click Verify disk to check for any errors.  If you find any errors, you should contact a data recovery specialist or computer repair company to assist immediately so you don’t lose important information.

If you’re looking for the best wireless router that is the fastest and widest range, look no further.  The Airport Extreme is the most solid router out there.  If your current Linksys, Netgear, or Dlink is not cutting the mustard, meaning your signal strength is low or not found, go the Apple route, get the Airport Extreme. 

In situations where constant router reboots where necessary or wireless extenders were not reaching duplex or townhouse floors, the Airport Extreme always seemed to provide the necessary wireless coverage.  And don’t worry, this wireless router is meant for Macs and PCs, and may be used with both.

If you want to get the Airport wireless router with an integrated 500GB hard drive, you can pick up the Time Capsule 500GB.  Or if you want to double your space, go for the Time Capsule 1TB .

All of the routers are wireless N and have the capability to plug in a USB printer and share the printer to all your computers in the apartment.  The time capsule is cool way to have a backup.  Instead of having an external hard drive to plug into your desktop, you can just wirelessly back up files to the Time Capsule’s hard drive.  This backup feature is accessible to all wireless computers.

If you still don’t get a good signal, you can purchase an Airport Express extender via Apple:

We just bought 2 Airport Express units thinking that it was needed for a 2,500 square foot apartment, but the Time Capsule alone was able to light up the whole apartment with wireless.  We recommend to try the Airport Extreme or one of the Time Capsules first, with your wireless computer, and see if that does the trick.  You’ll just need to pop in the router’s CD that comes with it and it will guide you through the setup.

Buying a mac server is much easier than buying a Windows server.  Well, this is not a thing.  It is because their are not many options to choose.  The Xserve, for instance, is only offered with 80GB hard drives or 1TB hard drives.  What happened to the 300GB or 500GB hard drives?  This is definitely a stark level of hard drive space options.  Keep in mind that this is when configuring the apple server through Apple directly.  Obviously, you can purchase the server and replace the hard drives with different sizes, by who needs the hassle?  On the Windows side, you can choose from many different hard drive sizes.

Also, the Xserve comes with just 3 hard drive bays whereas with Windows you can have up to 7 or 8.  So, you’re tapped out with 3TB of space on the new Xserve whereas with Windows you can created up to 8TB.  With Windows, you can set up a mirrored hard drive configuration or up to RAID 5 which allows the server to still run if a hard drive goes down.  On the Xserve, you can set up a 3-drive RAID or mirrored set for server data security.

On a positive note, with the Xserve comes all the necessary software bundled in its operating system.  It contains a file server, print server, e-mail server, and unlimited computers can connect to it.  On the Windows end, you have to choose between many different flavors - Windows Enterprise, Standard, Small Business, 32-bit or 64-bit, and more.  So, the confusion of what to choose it thrown out the window.  Of course, if you’re a server specialist, you might like having all of the operating system options available for network optimization and customization.

Overall, it is a breeze ordering an Xserve due to the limited options and the overall stability.  If you have a total mac network, the Xserve is the way to go due to keeping the platform at the same level.  But, if you have a mac and Windows network, a Windows server is the better option.

The rumors are true: Steve Jobs health is unfortunately not up to par.  Jobs wrote a letter to the entire Apple company notifying them that he will take a leave of absence for health concerns and will return at the end of June.  He made note of his recent hormone imbalance that caused him to lose proteins and thin out.  Due to increasing interruption of the public’s nosey rumors of Jobs’ health and his health itself, Steve said those are the main reasons for his temporary departure.

Tim Cook will be the temporary day-to-day operations guy while Jobs, as CEO, will stay provide input with important product decisions.  We really hope Jobs gets better soon.  He is an icon in the technology industry and computer support field and deserves to be back on his feet soon.

iPhoto has always been the go-to product from Apple for organizing and presenting your photos.  Now, iPhoto has made album creation even easier with the new Faces and Spaces categories.

Faces allows iPhoto to recognize a face and can group that person in one folder.  For instance, if you want to make a slideshow of just Grandma, you can select Grandma’s face, and then iPhoto does the rest with grouping all of Granny’s photos for you in a folder.  This is possible with the new iPhone or GPS-ready cameras.  If you have older phones or cameras, you can write in the photo that it’s Granny, and then iPhoto has visual recognition to group the same precious Grandma in the same category.

Similarly, Spaces from iPhoto can group cities to the same folder.  If you want to group your Mexico pics from 2001 and other years, it will take them all and put them in one folder.  This is powered by iPhoto’s GPS ability.

These functions alone make iPhoto ‘09 a great tech product to buy.  It has great tech support via Apple’s help site and makes film strips and shows a snap to create.

Finally, you can use as many iPods as you want to listen to your iTunes.  In the past, only a handful of iPods would be able to be synced with iTunes.  Now, you are limitless, and so are your friends and family!  Also, songs will be priced according to age, 99 cents for new tracks and 69 cents for the oldies. 

Now, for the toys.  Schiller, the Apple exec, touted the Macbook Pro with 15″ and 17″ screens.  Both will start shipping at the end of January.  The big 17″ one will go for $2,800.  New version of iLife multimedia programs will be available in these models.

Lastly, 8 million songs will be offered DRM-free, or without digital rights management software.  This means it will be easier to share iTunes with others.  Also, if your computer crashes, it will be easier to restore your iTunes without having to worry about using a third-party software to recover your files.

If you’re navigating on your iPhone and want to let someone else see exactly what you’re looking at, take a screenshot.  You can take a picture of the Internet, application you’re working in, or anything else by pushing the home button and sleep/wake button simultaneously.  Then, the screenshot you take will be automatically saved in your iPhone’s Photos app. 

The screenshot comes in handy if you want to remember what website you just went to; to display your e-mail configuration to a friend; or to view a cool picture or game for later.  Then, you can e-mail this screenshot to share.  This is a quick computer tip to share something for others or yourself.

The latest update to Leopard provides better security for Safari, better gaming performance, and more overall stability for components.

Here are the major points:

1. Better automated fixes.  Connection Doctor is more accurate, real junk mail is considered spam, high reliability when printing PDFs.
2. More stable Apple File sharing, more reliable att 3G wireless cards, and more stable networking.
3. Chat will allow you to properly paste text and images from Word to a chat window
4. Improved DVD performance, updated time zone, and iCal improvements.

Overall, the mac update is a good mac installation to to take care.  It will ensure your mac is working in a stable and speedy fashion.

Let’s start by saying there is no specific disk defragmenter program on the Mac like what comes with Windows.  This is because Apple notes that its system doesn’t fragment files.  Thus, it doesn’t need to prioritize moving around the fragmented files.  If this doesn’t make sense, we’ll back up.  Defragmenting a PC is necessary occasionally since files are saved in a fragmented manner.  Basically, files are saved in pieces on a first-in basis.  Over time, when you use certain programs more than others, such as Internet Explorer or e-mail, you’ll want to re-prioritize these fragmented files to the front of your hard drive so they are faster to access.

Apple does provide a disk utility function that you may search for.  This will perform many hard drive tasks, such as looking for physical and directory errors, and then look to fix them.   And if you don’t run anything, Apple says that its computers run automatic self-computer maintenance between 3:15AM - 5:30AM in the morning.   So, try to leave your computer on for hands-off operations, and computer repair.

Apple will soon no longer be producing Mac Mini’s.  The Mac Mini is the smallest desktop computer on the market and costs only $599.  It includes a 160GB hard drive, 1-2GB of RAM, 4 USB ports, 1 firewire port, 1 Network port, and Wireless G.  The Mac Mini came out in 2005 to compete against the cheaper priced PCs.  Since the PCs have been getting cheaper and cheaper on the desktop line, especially the Dell computers, the Mac Mini’s have not had such a competitive edge any more.  Further, many smaller laptops, such as the Dell Inspiron 9 mini, have been coming down in prices to further compete with the Mac Mini’s. 

So, Apple has decided to stop producing the mac Mini and will further focus on its MacBook and iMac lines.  The cheapest Mac going forward will be the $999 MacBook.  The Mini will probably stop being produced by early next year.  Until then, get them while they last!  They are a great option to set up in small spaces, or to have a cheap Mac up and running without all of the bells and whistles.  Please note though that the small size of the Mac Mini makes it challenging to replace failed computer parts.