Tweak X for performance


Bob Levitus, popularly known as Dr. Mac, has posted a list of tweaks that can squeeze a little more performance out of X.1.x on his OSXFAQ.com website. The list and the related links are reproduced for your convenience below:

"I get a lot of mail asking why OS X is so slow, or how to speed it up. Here's a quick and dirty list of things that I've found can make OS X feel faster (or even make it run faster):

"1. Use thousands of colors (instead of Millions). Use the Displays preference pane or the Displays system menu.

"2. Reduce the resolution of your display (not as useful for flat-panels but if you have a CRT monitor, give it a shot). Use the Displays preference pane or the Displays system menu.

"3. Use the Scale or Suck minimization instead of the CPU-cycle-sucking Genie. Use the Dock preference pane or TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.de/osx/).

"4. Kill those beautiful-but-CPU-thrashing drop shadows with ShadowKiller(http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shadowkiller/).

"5. Set the Mouse preference to its fastest setting in the Mouse preference pane.

"6. Use font smoothing sparingly. Set it to 12 points and under. Use the General preference pane for this, or use TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.de/osx/) to turn smoothing off completely.

"7. If you use Classic, turn off all unneeded extensions and control panels using Extensions Manager."

As I have discovered for myself, performing these adjustments will give you a little more speed, but the biggest improvement can be attained by eschewing Classic entirely. I've found that Entourage, IE, the Finder and other programs either don't crash at all or do so very, very infrequently (i.e. less than once a week) when Classic isn't running.

Do you have a link or tweak that you can share?