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Mac 101 - System Preferences: Hardware - Part 2

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 | Mac 101 | No Comments

There are three more groups of settings under Hardware that were not covered in Part 1. These are Keyboard & Mouse, Print & Fax, and Sound. These Hardware preferences allow you to control physical components of your computer or devises attached to it, such as keyboard, mouse, printer or speaker volume. Let’s dive right in.

Keyboard & Mouse
This group of preferences has lots of great settings. If you have a laptop, this will also include trackpad settings. Here you can adjust the key repeat rate, illumination of the keyboard if you have a MacBook Pro, trackpad speed, double-click speed, scrolling speed and other miscellaneous options. For the mouse you can set various behaviors for the buttons as well as adjust scrolling and clicking speeds. If you have a wireless mouse or keyboard, this is were you will pair them and set some related bluetooth options. Finally, this is a great resource of keyboard shortcuts. This is a great place to come to learn what they are and to modify them. So, if you’d like to keep your hands on the keyboard a little more than come here to find ways to do that. I’ve also written a separate post on keyboard shortcuts that lists some of the commonly used.

Wow! That was a lot.

Print & Fax
For the most part you will not use this group of options very much. In most cases, Mac OS X will recognize your printer and set it up automatically. However, here is where you can set the default printer or the printer that will be selected in the Print Dialog, as well as the default paper size. If you use a fax, this is where you have some options for that. You can enable receiving faxes on your computer in this area of system preferences. And finally, there’s an option to share your printer with other computers.

Sound
I don’t know about you, but I like sound on my computer. It helps me know if there’s a problem or I’m doing something wrong. In this panel you can select the alert sound for the system, set alert volume, set general output volume and also input volume and sensitivity.

This completes the Hardware category of System Preferences. In future posts we’ll discuss the remaining categories, Internet & Network, System and Other.

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Mac 101 - System Preferences: Internet & Network

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Mac 101 - System Preferences: Hardware - Part 1

Saturday, September 8th, 2007 | Mac 101 | No Comments

In this section of the System Preferences you can control the hardware components of your computer. These things include the display, optical drive, keyboard, mouse, printer and so on. There are seven groupings of settings in this section of System Preferences. We’ll cover the first four in this post.

Bluetooth
In this section you can control the Bluetooth functionality of your Mac. This is where you can turn Bluetooth on or off. If you’re using a wireless keyboard or mouse, this is also where you would manage the connectivity of such devices. And finally, here you can also control the sharing settings for bluetooth, including security and folders which connected devices can browse, such as your bluetooth-enabled mobile phone.

CDs & DVDs
In this section you control the behavior of CDs and DVDs that are inserted into your optical drive. You can specify what action should be taken when a blank CD or DVD is inserted or a music CD, picture CD or a video DVD.

Displays
In the Displays section of the Hardware preferences you can adjusted the resolution of your display, the number of colors displayed, the brightness and also select a color profile. If you’re an artist and you need your displayed color calibrated, this is where you would come to do that.

Energy Saver
This is where you can adjust your Mac’s power usage. You’re really not adjusting the wattage that your Mac will use to power itself, but you can adjust how long to keep the display on or when to put the computer to sleep if its idle. If you own a Mac laptop, you will want to be familiar with these settings as they will allow you to adjust power usage to extend battery life. This is where you can set up a schedule for your Mac to power up or shut down at specific times of the day.

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Next Lesson:
Mac 101 - System Preferences: Hardware - Part 2

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Mac 101 - System Preferences: Personal Settings - Part 2

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 | Mac 101 | No Comments

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

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