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Mac Fix-It says: Keep applications in the locations they were originally installed (usually /Applications)

Though it may be tempting to organize your applications into customized directories — for instance putting all of your Web browsers in a folder named “Browsers” within the /Applications directory — you should refrain from doing so under Mac OS X.

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Recently, when my laptop exhibited symptoms indicating the need to run some disk repair utilities, I ran the usual diagnostics and repairs with only temporary success. First, I booted from my Apple install disk and ran Disk Utility to repair the volume. When that didn’t work, I turned to Disk Warrior. When Disk Warrior couldn’t slaughter the hard disk gremlins, I became concerned that failure of the hard disk was imminent. Fortunately, I had a good, fairly current backup of my hard drive. Yay!
But before I sent my laptop to iResq (see post on March 4, 2007), I wanted to get a more current clone of my data.
Reading some articles in Apple’s knowledgebase, I learned about one other “tool”. See, it’s not really a tool, but an alternative way to boot up. It’s called Safe Boot and it’s accessed by holding down the SHIFT key at startup until you see the words ‘Safe Boot’ on the login screen.
Safe Boot performs a directory check of the startup volume; it clears some font caches and disables all startup items among other things. It doesn’t sound like much, but after a safe boot, I restarted and my system ran better. Albeit for only a short while. I made and tested a new clone of my hard disk, this time without errors. Then I sent my laptop to iResq; confident and able to continue working from my bootable clone. Safe Boot was a life extender. Learn more about Safe Boot.

I just discovered a neat-o website: Tubetorial. As the name suggests, here you will find tutorials in a video format, a lá YouTube. If you are a WordPress blogger, check out the “7 Essential WordPress Hacks”!
Tubetorial was created by CopyBlogger author, Brian Clark, and web designer, Chris Pearson, and launched last September.

Last week could have been a real downer experience, what with the hard disk on my laptop failing. But instead, I was able to get the drive replaced with minimal time away from the laptop.
In the past when I have needed service on a computer, the local stores seem to want to keep my machine for about a week. That’s a long time to be without one’s computer. This time, my friend, Rory, referred me to MacResq, now known as iResq. They service the entire line of iPods, iPhones (soon!) and portable Macintosh systems. And they do it quickly!

I contacted them on a Tuesday and placed my order. The next day, I received a special box in which to ship my laptop back to them. I sent it off to them that afternoon. Courier service each way is overnight. They received it Thursday morning, replaced the drive and shipped it back to me Thursday afternoon. I received my good-as-new laptop Friday morning!
The price was reasonable. The service was outstanding. I’ll use them again if the need arises.
Not only do they replace hard disks, but optical drives, memory, screens and batteries.
By the way, I was able to continue working thanks to friend, Marty, who lent me a spare G3 tower. I connected my external firewire drive (that contained my hard disk clone!) to it and booted from the external drive. My backup strategy is to make a complete clone of my hard disk once a week and incremental updates nightly.