I use a MacBook Pro as my main system, and sometimes working on a laptop for specific tasks can get a little hairy. A few weeks ago it started to run very slow. Between all the programs I was running, and the amount of data I had on my hard drive, it was struggling to perform like a MacBook Pro should. I then decided to back up essential data to my MyBook, format my hard drive, and reinstall OS X Leopard. After I reinstalled Leopard and had the operating system patched and updated, I decided to do something a little different. First off, I used AppZapper and deleted every native Apple program I wasn’t going to use (Mail, iWeb, etc). After that, I decided I was going to strictly use web applications instead of native apps to get things done. One by one I started replacing the desktop apps that I would have installed, with web apps. Instead of NewsFire, I now use Google Reader. Instead of Microsoft Office, I now use Google Apps. Instead of running iTunes, I now use Pandora. (I still use iTunes to sync my iPhone though.) I’ve found that I’m way more efficient running things this way, and keeping everything open in tabs in firefox is much easier and smoother than fumbling around with native apps and also saves space and memory. Although it took a while to get used to, I now have a smaller dock, more memory, more hard drive space, and I might even be more productive.
