Here is a collection of useful things we have learned over the years.

Some are useful to everyone. Some are aimed at novice Mac users. Some are pointed at power users.

Links to other useful online Macintosh resources.

Trevor and Dave gave a presentation on "Troubleshooting" at a recent VMUG Meeting, and their presentation is now available right here.

If you are relatively new to the net or are having trouble figuring out how to deal with files you have donwloaded, have a look at Downloading Files from the Internet.

If memory, or the lack thereof, has got you down, check out our tips for managing your RAM. You may have a lot more headroom on your machine than you realize.

Trevor has also written a Macintosh Survival Guide, full of helpful hints for preventing touble, and for getting out of trouble once it occurs.

Trevor's article, From DOS to Mac and Back, is a detailed guide to the issues you will encounter when sharing files between Macs and Intel based machines.

We hope you find something useful in here. Please let us know if you have discovered something that should be included in here.

Tips for Everyone

1. Save early, save often.

Save the file you are working on every time you pause. Save it as often as you would like to have to re-do the work. If you are happy to re-do an hours worth of work, save once an hour. If you don't want to have to re-do any more than five minutes work, save every five minutes.

2. Keep a current back-up of everything that you don't want to lose.

Things go wrong. Software crashes. Hardware fails. Your drive will foul up. Get used to the idea, and start preparing for it right now. Make copies of all of your crucial files. Don't forget about the preference and settings files in your System folder.

3. Protect your equipment.

There is a dead surge protector hanging in our office. One day at a trade show, a power surge hit. The surge damaged every computer in the show, except the one that the surge protector was protecting. The fifty dollar surge protector died, but the seven thousand dollars worth of equipment plugged into it survived.

4. Keep your system clean, inside and out.

Keeping the outside of the computer clean is easy, but your System Folder needs to be kept clean, too. Remove extensions and control panels that you don't need. Every bit of extraneous code you have hanging around is a potential problem. Similarly, keep your extensions and control panels up to date. There is no reason to keep on using a buggy, unstable old version of an item when a fix is available. Sometimes you have to look for the minor upgrades, but it is often worth the search. A minor upgrade may spell the difference between endless crashes and total stability.

5. Register your software.

Virtually every software manufacturer offers no- or low-cost upgrades to their software products to registered owners. But if you don't send in that card, they have no way of reaching you. Plus, if you have a problem and need to call their Tech Support line, they're going to need proof that you are a legitimate purchaser of their product.

Beginner Tips

1. Read the manuals.

One of the beautiful things about a Mac is how easy it is to get started. The machine does have a lot of not-so-obvious features to make things go even more smoothly. Check out the manuals that came with it, and you will find some great ideas and some really nifty hidden features.

2. Play with your Mac.

Relax. It is supposed to be fun. Let the people on the "other" machines struggle to get their machines running. Take it easy and give yourself some time to get to know your machine. Grab a copy of Klondike and play solitaire for a while, it will really help you get used to using the mouse. Grab a copy of Marathon or the freeware demo version and blow away some aliens. It won't teach you anything, but it will let you burn off some frustration.

3. Join your local user group.

Join the Mac Users Group in your area, or at least go to a meeting or two. At some time, these people were all in the same position as you are. Learn from their experiences. Pick their brains. Once you get to know who the real gurus are, and pick up some of the lingo, you will find all kinds of neat and nifty ideas.

4. Try things out on copies, not on your key files.

Often, commands that can't be undone will ask for confirmation. A box appears asking "Are you sure you want to transmorgify your thingamajig?" If you aren't sure, cancel it, make a copy of your thingamajig and transmorgify it. If it works the way you wanted, do it to your original thingamajig. If it doesn't, you haven't lost anything.

5. Don't panic!

Things are rarely as bad as they seem. Calm down and write down exactly what happened immediately before the disaster struck. Take a break and come back to your problem when you can look at it clearly. If you are still stumped, call us.

Power Tips

1. Get more RAM and a bigger drive.

RAMDoubler is great. File compression, in all of its forms, is terrific. Neither one is a substitute for the real thing. Get more of each.

2. Automate everything that you can.

Any task that needs to be done more than once is a candidate for automation. Between the built in macro languages in many programs, AppleScript, and utilities like QuicKeys, you can string together amazing sequences of tasks, and execute them all in one shot. For raw power and amazing scripting possibilites, nothing can beat Userland Frontier, and now that it is free, you have no excuse not to try it out. The learning curve can be steep with some scripting systems, but once you have a grip on them you can teach your machine to take care of the drudgery, while you do what people do best - think.

3. Read the manuals.

Check out the documents that came with your program. Find out what it can do. Find out what features are new since the last version you used. Look for shortcuts and different ways of doing the things you want to do. Often the Read-Me file that gets installed with the program is the most important part of the documentation - it tells you what was wrong in the manual.

4. Get to know what's in your System Folder.

If you are going to troubleshoot, you should become familiar which components your Mac System Folder needs and which components it doesn't need. Once you get to know your extensions and control panels, you will also be able to recognize new System resources that have been added by new programs that you installed.

5. Keep up to date on updates.

Make an effort to learn about the latest versions, patches and updates of the programs that you use. Good sources of information are the Internet (there's a wealth of information right here in Quill's pages: check out The Complete Conflict Compendium" and Links to other useful online Macintosh resources.), Macintosh magazines, user groups and manufacturers' newsletters and notices (you did send in your registration cards, didn't you?). You don't necessarily need to jump and install every update that comes along, but try to know what the updates are designed to fix, and whether it's something that affects how you use the program.

6. Keep your expectations realistic.

You didn't win the Olympic Gold in the hundred meters the day after you took your first step. Everything takes time, especially learning to do creative work with a tool as flexible as your computer. Give yourself some time to learn how to do what you want to do. Never upgrade or change programs or hardware the night before a big project is due.