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I strongly disagree with your recommendation to run additional software in the background to monitor a hard drive's SMART status when it is so fast and easy to launch Disk Utility. Those who can't remember to perform this simple check periodically can set an iCal reminder.
From my perspective, computers are fundamentally so complex that anyhing you can do to simplify the system is to your advantage. Adding extra layers of software "in the background" to perform trivial tasks is not a good strategy in my book.

I don't dispute that restarting your Mac periodically is a good idea. But all that's necessary to reclaim lost memory is to restart the programs that typically suffer from memory leakage, like Safari and Mail. Personally, I just relaunch these two programs periodically during the day, which takes a few seconds or less.

Rather than restart, I find that logging out works really well too. (Some) virtual memory is reclaimed, misbehaving processes get restarted, and logging in takes much less time than a restart.

> activate Dashboard (F12 by default)
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Note that on the newer aluminum keyboards, Dashboard has been moved to F4 (and that key has a Dashboard icon).

alansky said:

IMO, people have enough things to keep track of and deal with on their computers -- including maintenance that can't be automated -- without having to manually launch Disk Utility every time they want to check SMART status. More importantly, a utility such as SMARTReporter keeps a constant eye on your drives; if you're checking manually, the vast majority of the time you're not monitoring, so unless you're checking multiple times per hour, the odds are overwhelmingly against you actually catching a SMART status exception in a timely manner.

(As I noted in the article, SMART can't catch every type of drive problem. But since it can check for some, why not take advantage of it? A utility such as SMARTReporter, or DiskWarrior's monitoring feature, takes minimal system resources and is very unlikely to cause any sort of problem.)

alansky said:

This does indeed help, which is why I mentioned Web browsers separately. But there are many other things running on your Mac, including dozens of background processes. (If you use a memory-monitoring utility, you can see how your Mac's memory is being used, including virtual memory, page ins and page outs.) I've found that at some point, a restart (or, to a lesser extent, a log out/in) helps more than just restarting particular programs. Plus there are many "house cleaning" events that happen with a restart. I don't think you need to do it frequently, but it's a good idea to restart every week or two if you generally leave your Mac on.

Fwiw, you can get two widgets that will help you check what software is up-to-date and what is not from here (for applications):
http://gkaindl.com/software/app-update
and here (for widgets):
http://gkaindl.com/s...e/widget-update
No need to pay for VT Pro or the MacUpdate equivalent as both are free/donationware.
The widgets will check VT, MU and the apple websites for the latest versions.
Also, it is worth pointing out that Leopard has introduced one huge annoyance with Software Update - it will not run automatically on your schedule unless you are logged in as an admin account. If you run your account as a Standard user, you will never have Software Update run, no matter what schedule you set (even though you use an admin username and password to set it). It will also not tell you what updates have been installed - which is good from a security perspective (as it prevents people accessing a standard account and seeing that e.g. Quicktime is still the bug-riddled prior version with easy exploits to take your system down), but once you have unlocked the preference panel with an admin account, it really should show you this information.

I don't think you need to do it frequently, but it's a good idea to restart every week or two if you generally leave your Mac on.

Roger that.

About the only time I restart the computer is when an upgrade comes along and demands it.

Question: Is putting aliases on the desktop seen the same as having the original folders on the desktop?

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jack041251

Good point. Also,on the most recent 17" Macbook Pro Dashboard is a 2 key combo of: fn in the lower left and F12. Of course some people like to keep it in the dock.

machomanx said:

Any icon on the desktop - folder, file, alias or disk - has the same impact.