The views control panel contains one thing that can speed things along in list view. Under icon sizes there are three options. Most people have it set to medium. This allows for the icons of a file to be displayed. Most people don't realize how much this slows things down. If you switch it to small, it does not bother to try and display the icons, and this speeds things along immensely.
2) Apple Menu
One of the nicest additions to system 7 was the ability to put anything
in the apple menu. This, however, has led to some problems because you can
put as much in there as you want. This is a huge time drain on the computer if you put a lot in there, like putting an alias to your hard drive. The reason is because it has to search for all these items at startup, and put them in a database. And for everything in the root folder, it has to load the icons. Apple Menu replacement utilities, such as BeHierarchic, speed this along by finding the icons and file name when you click on the menu, but it still takes longer then simply reducing what you have in there. My suggestion is to stick to often used applications, the more important DAs, and the control panels folder.
3) Desktop Picture
One of the nicest things in MacOS 8 is the desktop picture. While this is really cool, and nothing is more exhilarating then seeing your favorite picture at boot, this still is one of the largest drains of system time on the MacOS. This doesn't apply to only OS8 users, however. OS8's desktop picture is basically the same thing as the Decor and
DeskPicture system enhancers. I'll go more in depth in this in a future article. However, don't be misled, the desktop pattern isn't the same thing. The picture is loaded by a control panel, the pattern is coded into the system file, which is why you see the pattern at boot up rather than the picture.
4) Fonts
It doesn't take a genius to figure out how badly fonts drag down your
system. With any program that has a font menu, it takes a while to
load that menu. A good example is in Netscape. In the General
Preferences window, if you click on the Fonts tab and you have a lot of
fonts installed, it will take a while before it draws the tab. While
this can be sped up using FastFontMenu, it still is a major processor
hog.
5) Icons
One of the other nice new features of System 7 is the ability to add
custom icons. This, however, can slow things down just a wee bit. When
the window loads, it has to look in the folder or document for the icon.
This is only a minor hog, but it can add up in a window with lots of
programs.
Another little performance tweek is to turn off "Show Desktop in Background" in the General Controls control panel. This gets rid ofextra graphics that the computer has to display. However, it will also make it necessary to use the application menu to switch programs.
6) Desktop
The desktop is one of the nicest places to put files that you often
access, however boot time slows down quite a bit when it has a lot of
files to display on the desktop. I suggest having a single folder on the
desktop that contains your often accessed files.
Another alternative is to keep a tab that does this using the OS8
tabs. If you don't have OS8, you can use something like Now Tabs, or
one of the numerous tab programs on MacDownload.com or Shareware.com.
However, remember that this will decrease system performance.
7) Control Panels & Extensions
I don't think I need to talk too much about this one. Obviously the more system enhancers you have, the slower your computer will operate. This will
be covered in April's issue.
8) Use the LibMotoSh library
This little shared library called LibMotoSh speeds up a whole assortment of various programs on your mac and there don't appear to be many side affects to using it. It speeds up a whole variety of functions in different programs that even Mac OS 8.1 hasn't "touched" on yet.
There are hundreds of other little things you can do to speed up your computer. As we think up more, they'll be posted in the power tips section, and if we get enough we'll do a second article. If you have a speed booster tip, send it to Chiper. He'll post
