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231 Comments
- coit, on 03/11/2008, -8/+79I own a Mac so I don't have to reformat once a year.....
- drlha, on 03/11/2008, -8/+65One thing about owning a Mac is that I don't have to reformat the damn computer every year to keep it working like I did my old Windows machines. I don't know WTF this guy is on about.
- PoopOnPaul, on 03/11/2008, -3/+41Why do they always leave out Growl???
- drlha, on 03/11/2008, -3/+38Reformatting a drive stops drive failures does it?
- r2builder, on 03/11/2008, -1/+25because nobody makes "Top 11" lists.
- r2builder, on 03/11/2008, -3/+22Don't forget iserialreader, which grants access to dozens of other essential programs ;)
- inactive, on 03/11/2008, -4/+20And right after that, spyware scanners, virus scanners, firewall...
- ImpoliteAndEvil, on 04/06/2009, -0/+16"I format my Mac once a year"
I don't even RESTART my Mac once a year! (sarcasm, but almost true!) - ralphthemagi, on 03/11/2008, -1/+17There is no reason to reformat. It will not extend the life of a drive. I don't know why you would think it would.
You shouldn't be editing on drives you care about anyway. Heavy editing should always be done on a RAID array outside of the system drive. - Ramble, on 03/11/2008, -1/+16If you think that then you have a lot to learn about how hard drives work.
- dagamer34, on 03/11/2008, -1/+15The main reason to reformat a Windows machine is because the registry has corrupted itself.
The only reason to reformat a Mac is because the next version of OS X was released. - antibastard, on 03/11/2008, -3/+15"Probably because it crashes every 5 minutes." No it doesn't.
- diggSJaustin, on 03/11/2008, -1/+13I don't know what this guy is talking about, but I ran my G4 867 MHz PowerBook for almost 5 years before I did an erase & install. Three incremental OS upgrades, countless applications installed and uninstalled, near constant use every day of that time, and the erase/install only made it marginally faster—and that may have been due entirely to the switch from Tiger to Leopard for all I know.
- Frost9999, on 03/11/2008, -3/+14ensures*
- ralphthemagi, on 03/11/2008, -1/+12Here's some other fun stuff, since the article is dead.
Payware/Freeware:
Coda
CSSEdit
Disco
Flip4Mac
NetNewsWire
Opera
Pixelmator
Skype
Textmate
Transmit
Open Source:
Adium
Burn
Camino
Colloquy
Cyberduck
Firefox
Handbrake
Miro
Thunderbird
Transmission
Vienna
VLC - groverblue, on 03/11/2008, -1/+12exactly what i was thinking
- blackdeath42, on 03/11/2008, -2/+12tbh it beats my computer.... i have to reformat every 2 months XD
oh and there is only 1 app you need to run once you have installed vista... you can download it here: http://dban.sourceforge.net/
........very effective - chazuk, on 03/11/2008, -0/+9He's talking about the fact you don't have to install drivers due to apples closed hardware lineup.
Video drivers, sound card drivers and chipset drivers e.t.c. - ItsMyWii, on 03/11/2008, -0/+9160? A record? You're kidding right?
- daborg, on 03/11/2008, -2/+11I guess they forgot to install a fast web server.
- notquiteelvis, on 03/11/2008, -4/+13For Mac users - at least this one - reformatting a hard drive is rather like a hobby, something to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon when there's not a lot else to do. For winBlow$ users - like yourself, if I understand your tone correctly - it's more like a prerequisite to getting anything done.
HTH. - wonderchemist, on 03/11/2008, -1/+10He must be a switcher who just reformats because that's what he did on windows.
- vault, on 03/11/2008, -6/+14I used to use Unrarx but now I use betterzip...I think theunarchiver now supports password-protected rars as well.
Not sure how quicksilver/launchbar didn't get mentioned. - Ramble, on 03/11/2008, -2/+10What you're saying is Leopard is faster on fast hardware than Windows on slow hardware?
- skribble, on 03/11/2008, -0/+8What fool just reformats his Mac every year to clean out ".prefs" files (which BTW are not .prefs but .plist these days)? You can easily just delete these files (provided they follow any sort of Apple Guidelines they should be easy to identify and remove) if this is too difficult, maybe the first App this fool should consider is AppZapper. Buried as "This guy lost all credibility with his premise so everything else he has to say is at best suspect"
- inactive, on 03/11/2008, -3/+10Um...no. As the author stated, sometimes you just want a fresh start. I do an annual reformat as well, just normal spring cleaning, but it's not needed.
- luchid, on 03/11/2008, -3/+10Not even Windows can keep Windows clean.
- luchid, on 03/11/2008, -0/+6Author doesn't know jack about Macs. Very few bad-coded apps leave .pref files behind after removing them and even if they do you can remove them with Appzapper. And even if you don't remove them they don't slow the system down since it won't even load them. Pref files are basically XML files read on an app's launch time. Nothing more.
- twoboxen, on 03/11/2008, -2/+7don't worry about the link/mirror being dead. you're not missing much.
- ghunt, on 03/11/2008, -1/+6I hope you aren't serious.
- caerwyn, on 03/11/2008, -1/+6They don't. The article author doesn't really know what he's talking about.
- SublimeRuin, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4Transmission > Azerus
- TritonX, on 03/11/2008, -2/+6Probably an old windows habit that is sticking. At least it's not every other month.
- SublimeRuin, on 03/11/2008, -1/+5I use windex....keeps my windows squeaky clean...
- skyshock1, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4Nonsense. I've never had to reformat my Linux desktop in 5 years. It runs just as well today as it did when it was first imaged.
- Books, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4I agree with you man, he's [MrBabyMan] getting annoying.
- Genma, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4it's just a typical solution for any os when people don't know what they're doing.
- coit, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4If you are running a Windows system, it might help to reformat just because of how crappy the registry is. But on anything else, there's no need.
- form3hide, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4I've never had to reformat my mac, so I can't answer your "questions."
However, my hard drive did fail so I had to install a new one... thus i had to install osx on it... and thus, had to install my 10 essential mac apps ;) - hoodedrobin, on 03/11/2008, -1/+5Actually he has a valid point. Many linux servers I have ran could stay turned on for over a year without restarting *unless I did all the kernel updates* OS X is just a better looking bsd and last time I checked you didn't have to reformat every year. Windows needs a reformat so often cause of registry issues and corruptions to system32 files because of fragmentation of the hard drive. OS X is really stable I could only understand reformatting every year if you were a complete idiot or if you fill your hard drive to the point that it gets fragmented.
- Weaselboy, on 03/11/2008, -4/+8Grammar police?
- javaroast, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4Not really the end of story as far as I'm concerned. Reformatting is just one way of cleaning the cruft and I suppose some think it's the easy way. For myself reloading an OS and reinstalling all my apps and preferences for no apparent reason doesn't sound like a lot of fun. If I have a problem on my systems (Linux and Windows) I solve the problem and I keep up on general maintenance items on the systems. Using the popular car analogy, if I had a problem with my alternator I could solve it by replacing the entire engine, or I could troubleshoot the problem and just replace or fix the alternator. I would say that if you do plan on frequent reinstalls at least make an image of your system in it's initial state with essential Apps and drivers, etc loaded so you can avoid that whole install OS install Apps mess.
- FredFredrickson, on 03/11/2008, -6/+10The Windows Fanboy reply: "You actually have to reformat your Mac? I thought it just works!"
The Mac Fanboy reply: "I will never have to reformat because I use a Mac."
The reasonable reply: "Reformatting now and then is useful no matter what OS you use, end of story." - skyshock1, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4*nix-based OS's with a half-way decent package management system (Yum, apt, portage, etc..) should NEVER EVER need formattting and/or defragmenting. It's simply not a problem because of how those OS's handle hard disk reads/writes. Anyone who tells you differently is talking out of their ass.
- Nrvana423, on 03/11/2008, -0/+4so is the caps lock key
- bradleyland, on 03/11/2008, -2/+6Let's be honest:
* Windows needs to be reinstalled frequently because of dumb users
* A fragmented hard drive doesn't require reformatting
* "Registry issues" are rarely random; they're caused by installing ***** software or contracting malware (dumb users)
* NTFS is a damned good file system that does not randomly/magically corrupt files due to fragmentation - kipmartin, on 03/11/2008, -6/+10another republican who thinks hes in an airport mens room.
- TheUnlearn, on 03/11/2008, -2/+6i just recently installed Leopard and QS hasn't crashed on me once so far. maybe you're just doing it wrong.
- orenshk, on 03/11/2008, -3/+6Mirror: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:sanp_T1p6c8J:w ...
- m1ss1ontomars, on 03/11/2008, -0/+3This article is stupid. I'm sorry, but to be honest NeoOffice is one of the worst pieces of crap I have ever used, second probably only to the Mac OS X X11 port of OpenOffice.org. (OpenOffice.org for Windows, on the other hand, is an excellent suite and perfectly replaces Office 2003). NeoOffice's UI is awful, the program is slow, and editing and navigating simple documents takes forever. Say what you like about my attitudes on FOSS, but I'll take Office 2008 over NeoOffice anyday.
As for Image Shackle, that's an extremely useless program. If you're going to open up the image, it will open by default in Preview, which (surprise) has a handy "Adjust size" option under the Tools menu. You can WYSIWYG crop your images too (select, then apple+K). Also, Facebook automatically resizes images to a max of 640 x 480 anyway. Profile pictures are constrained by the width of the left hand column. Who the hell has had a problem with pictures being too large for Facebook? -
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