monolingual
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Put Leopard on a diet while waiting for Snow Leopard to be released
We've all been there; we've all had that sickening feeling that comes from seeing "Macintosh HD" with less than 1 GB of available space. If you're staring at your Finder wondering where you can find some additional space without having to swap out the hard drive or buying a new Mac altogether Computerworld is here to help. They have an article up on the many ways it is possible to get rid of unnecessary files in Leopard as well as disable features you may not be using all in an effort to slim down and speed up your Mac while you wait for Snow Leopard.Many of the tips involve using software that we have previously mentioned, some of which are free and others are not. The list of tools used include such gems as Xslimmer for removing PowerPC compatibility, Monolingual for stripping out languages that are non-native to you, as well as DiskInventoryX for getting a graphical representation of where all your hard drive space went. The article also discusses improving performance by disabling 3D effects that use up GPU cycles for those users who prefer fast to pretty as well as increasing the amount of RAM installed in your system.While Snow Leopard may still be some time away the tips provided are a great collection of steps that can be completed to help any Mac squeeze out some better performance and additional hard drive space. If you have any tips that aren't mentioned add them to the comments!Finder icon courtesy of FHKE's Flickr stream
Microsoft developer talks about Office 2008 update issues
Erik Schwiebert is one of the lead developers on the Mac Business Unit team under the Microsoft banner. I find their position constantly interesting -- even in these enlightened days of Safari for Windows, many dyed-in-the-wool Mac users still consider Microsoft the enemy, and yet the Mac BU has always been like a kind of diplomatic envoy. We have to use things like Office and Entourage, so we cautiously let them across the border, regarding them like strange visitors from the other side of the wall.But maybe that's just all in my mind. Recently, the Mac BU released an update for Office 2008, and lots of users, apparently, have suffered from error problems while trying to install it. So many, in fact, that Schwiebert has responded to the problems on his blog, saying that the problems are most likely because users have deleted or otherwise messed with files inside the installation, causing the installer to abort. And that strange Mac BU/Mac users fragile truce comes into play here as well -- he specifically calls out Xslimmer and Monolingual, two programs that delete often-unnecessary files in OS X, for causing the issues.There's a workaround floating around, but Schwiebert warns it leaves the application suite in a possibly unstable and unsupportable state. Unfortunately, Schwiebert doesn't really offer any solutions (other, we guess, than to reinstall the software so that it's back to the full install, and then apply the update). And the alliance between the Mac BU and their users remains fragile -- we've got to work together, but it seems that many are unhappy about it.
Low End Mac Suggestions for Optimizing Performance
Ed Eubanks over at Low End Mac has a nice set of suggestions for optimizing performance on your Mac. The main upshot of the article is to turn off or delete things you don't need (e.g. Universal Access, seldom used System Preferences, extra localization languages, etc.) in order to salvage as much RAM and hard drive space as possible, but he has a variety of good suggestions. Their motto over there is "How much Mac do you need?", but even if you've got an Intel beast I've found that you pretty much never have enough system resources, so these are good tips for everyone. Check it out over at Low End Mac.[Via Digg]
Monolingual
One of our readers recently wrote in and asked us how he could slim down his install of OS X. One simple way is to get rid of all those languages that you don't use which are installed by default with OS X (if you hit 'Customize' while installing OS X you can really cut down on the bloat by only installing the languages and print drivers that you will use).Monolingual is a freeware app that deletes all those other pesky languages from your Mac (just be careful not to delete the language you use because the only way to get them back is to reinstall OS X).I just ran it on my Macbook and it freed up 2.4 gigs of space, though it did take about 30 minutes to run.Update: Be careful to only remove the extraneous languages from your Mac using this program (as I did). Uncheck all the 'Architecture' options, otherwise you'll break Rosetta and blame me (and no one wants that).
