Mac 101 - System Preferences: Personal Settings - Part 2

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 | Mac 101

Let’s pick up where we left off. Last time we covered the first 4 groups of settings under the Personal category in System Preferences. Today, we’ll cover the rest of that category. Let’s dig right in.

International
Here you will find setting for language, format and input menu. This is where you tell your Mac which region of the world you live in, how to format the date, time and which currency symbol to use. In addition, you have options here for which languages you want available in the Input Menu on the Task Bar. The languages you select here under the Input Menu will be available to use in documents. For example, if you need to be able to type in Spanish, you can check of the box by Spanish. You will notice that you have a flag on your Task Bar, when you click on the flag it displays the language you have made available for use in applications. Select the language you want to type in and off you go.

Security
This is the biggie. Mac OS X lets you encrypt your entire home folder. This is great for security. However, it can be very dangerous. If you forget the master password, the encrypted data will be lost. And since a good portions of all the things you save are stored in the home folder, the lost can be substantial. So, use this feature with caution. There are several other options in this area such as requiring password to wake up from sleep or screen saver, log out after a period of inactivity and so on. This is also where you can disable the infrared remote control receiver.

Spotlight
Spotlight is a search tool built into Mac OS X. It searches your entire hard drive. In this area of System Preferences you can select the order in which results appear. For example, results matching an application will appear first and then system preference, followed by documents folder and so on. Here you can modify the keyboard shortcut that activates Spotlight and set privacy for certain areas on the hard drive.

This covers the first category of settings, Personal, in System Preferences. In the next installment of Mac 101 we’ll move on to Hardware. If you’d like to receive these in your Inbox, sign up for email deliver.

Let me know in the comments what you think about these Mac 101 posts. Do you find them helpful? Informative? Or useless? I’d like to hear your opinion.

Next Lesson:
Mac 101 - System Preferences: Hardware - Part 1