People who have been using the Mac OS for a long time may know all of these but these small tips may be useful for some people. If you have some more to add, that would be nice.

* Have an empty folder on your desktop: You may find that if you drag a file or a folder from a floppy disk or CD-ROM onto the desktop, you are not actually copying that file or folder to the hard disk. If you move that file or folder onto the hard disk icon to copy them, but that probably would not be neat. So I created a permanent folder on my desktop, just put it on the left on the hard disk icon and give it a name something like "Processing Folder". If you move a file or folder from a floppy disk, CD-ROM or another hard disk into it, you are actually copying them into your hard disk. This folder is also handy for storing your downloads until you process them and put them where they belong.

* Create an alias of your hard disk and put it in the Apple Menu Items inside the System Folder. I give this alias a name like "Hard Disk Explorer" and whenever I want to go to a specific folder on the hard disk, I would use the Apple menu, and easily go to that folder. For example, if you want to open the Preferences folder, you would have to open several folders to get there but by using the alias of the hard disk, you can go straight to the Preferences folder. It is also useful if you want to run software installers, etc., you don't have to open a folder, just use this menu and launch those installers.

* Use the Command + Control + S to turn the Control Strip on and off. The Control Strip is useful, but it is not so good leaving it on the screen all the time. So, I would open the Control Strip control panel and select the option of turning the Control Strip on and off using the above keyboard combination and call the Control Strip up only when I need to and make it disappear when I don't need it.

* If you have some software or hardware problems and you want to see if a completely new System Folder could solve those problems but still want to keep your current System Folders and various folders as they are. I use free Apple's Disk Copy program, create a Mac disk image about 200MB or less, mount the disk image on the desktop and give it a name something like "Second System Folder". Insert the Mac OS CD-ROM and when installing the Mac OS, select this disk image as the disk you want to install to. When you have finished, drag the disk image disk and drop it onto the real hard disk. You can make the old System Folder inactive by moving the Finder file to the desktop for example, double click the new System Folder to open it and it will be active. Move the Finder back to its original place, restart the computer and your Mac should now use the new System Folder. If you want to use your old System Folder, just make the new one inactive and the old one active using the above method and restart your Mac. If the new System Folder did not solve your problems, then just delete the "Second System Folder" folder on your hard disk and everything are back to the way they were originally.

[This message has been edited by Seagull (edited 02-03-2000).]

[wlonh]

it probably does not matter so much anymore, but "Create an alias of your hard disk and put it in the Apple Menu Items inside the System Folder" can make some older Macs run slower.

and FinderPop kicks butt, you will hardly believe what it can do! see versiontracker.com and search keyword finderpop...

also: "Use the Command + Control + S to turn the Control Strip on and off."... i just hit F5 (because it is dead in the middle at the top of my beige extended keyboard) and it is gone, this can be set in the Control Strip ontrol panel.

[tooki]

Re: the first tip, about dragging to the desktop. While it is true of floppies, zips, hard drives, disk images that are not designated as read-only, and other writable media, dragging a file from a CD-ROM (or any write-protected or read-only medium) always copies. The deciding factor is whether Mac OS can alter the disk's directory: if it can, it updates it to reflect the file's new location; if it can't, it copies the file.

tooki