Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac (e-book)

reviewed by Kale Feelhaver

If you are an IT geek like me, maintaining your Mac is something you do naturally. However, if you are an average Joe, computer maintenance is not always obvious. Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac is a great e-book for a novice looking to learn a little about Mac OS X maintenance, but is also great for power users looking for a few new maintenance tricks. The e-book is easy to read, and includes step-by-step instructions for each maintenance procedure. In addition, the e-book includes a schedule to help you plan a maintenance routine for you Mac, and a couple of useful coupons.

Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac discusses daily, weekly, monthly and annual tasks for Mac maintenance. Daily tasks include software updates and backup, weekly tasks include cleaning caches and rebooting, monthly tasks include emptying the trash and repairing permissions, annual tasks include cleaning your keyboard and changing your password. Joe Kissel goes over several maintenance routines that use Mac OS X’s built-in utilities, but he also makes references to shareware programs like Cocktail, Font Finagler, and Drive Genius. Kissel brings up the subject of disk defragmenting, but adds his own opinions when he says, “you will probably never need to do this.” He takes a similar stance on repairing permissions.

Overall, I don’t think I learned anything new from this e-book, but I agreed with Kissel’s opinions. This e-book is $10 well spent for any Mac addict. Every user, regardless of skill level, should learn a little about maintaining Mac OS X. A Mac is an investment, and learning to maintain your investment will keep your Mac healthy for years to come. The only thing this e-book is missing is a downloadable iCal maintenance schedule. Maybe that is in the works.