How to Increase the Connection Speed in Leopard OS

Apple's Leopard operating system came out in October 2007. It was the sixth major release in the Mac OS X and covers core components, applications and tools. With more than 300 new features when compared to its predecessors, according to Apple, it isn't without its kinks. Due to the additional features, many opening on startup, Leopard runs slower than it's successors, but there's a way to up performance without the loss of usability.

• 1

  Disable your dashboard widgets. Widgets use a fair amount of processing power and can slow the computer. To disable the widgets, go to "Applications," "Utilities" and then "Terminal." In the terminal, copy and paste the following (without quotation marks): "defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES" and hit enter. Type "killall Dock" (without quotation marks) in the space provided. This disables widgets.

• 2

  Remove any fonts that you don't use from your system. Go to your "Home Folder," "Library" and then "Fonts." In most cases, you'll only use the basic fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial and Garamond.

• 3

  Turn off universal access by going to "System Preferences" and then "Universal Access." Turn off whatever you aren't using. This helps free space and memory.

• 4

  Open your activity monitor by going to "Applications," "Utilities" and then "Activity Monitor." Look at the applications you have running to see which ones are using the most memory. You can tell which applications use the most memory by looking under the "Rsize" column. If an application is using too much memory and you don't need it running at this time, close the application in the activity monitor.

• 5

  Turn off Bluetooth if you don't use it. You can do this by going to "System Preferences" and then "Bluetooth."

• 6

  Empty your trash bin. Doing this frees some additional space so your computer can make use of its virtual memory.

• 7

  Make sure your laptop or desktop has about 10 percent free space. Mac uses that space as virtual memory when applications get too heavy.

• 8

  Install more RAM. If you're still having problems with the speed on your system, you might need to upgrade its internal memory.