maintenance

Tesla plans big announcement that Model S owners 'will like'

There's the possibility that Tesla may be looking to make its luxury all-electric cars a tiny bit more affordable. The company's CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday that Tesla will announce some big news on Friday.

Announcement of new @teslamotors strategy tomorrow. Tesla owners will like this.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2013

While no further information is given, this tweet does offer some clues into what Musk may be suggesting. The fact that he mentioned it will be something "Tesla owners will like" harkens back to a similar tweet from last month.

After tweeting about an … Read more

Automate home maintenance with BrightNest for iOS

Like most homeowners, I've got furnace filters to replace, smoke-alarm batteries to check, a central air conditioner to maintain, and so on. I also have a septic tank and water softener that need occasional attention.

Unfortunately, I'm terrible at tracking this stuff, meaning important tasks often get overlooked or neglected -- sometimes at their peril (and my expense).

BrightNest for iOS lets me schedule these and other home maintenance jobs, thereby ensuring they don't get forgotten.

The app does require you to create an account (because it syncs with the BrightNest Web service), though you can also … Read more

Improve PC performance

Aro 2013 promises to speed up your PC by performing an all-around cleanup. It will scour through your machine looking for junk files, broken or missing Registry keys, and security vulnerabilities. The look and feel of the original Aro is there, but be warned that this is a different beast than its predecessor.

To start off with some good changes, installing and removal is a breeze, a huge improvement over the 2012 version that we very much appreciated. The bad news is, Aro 2013 now limits its free trial to fixing only the first 50 errors (previously 100). This is … Read more

Create scheduled backups with TurboBackup

Horror stories about failed systems and lost files are far too common. TurboBackup by FileStream is a full-scale backup solution that lets users schedule periodic backup processes to protect their critical files.

FileStream TurboBackup is incredibly flexible in handling various backup formats. The Backup Wizard will guide you through a series of long steps to configure their operation. users can choose to backup files to hard drives, CD/DVDs, or even online via FTP or FileStream's own backup server. After selecting the files and directories, you'll then be given an option to save as a zip file and … Read more

Spring cleaning tips to revive your Windows PC

It's always exciting when you bring home a new computer. It feels so powerful and fast; you can't imagine ever needing to buy another one again. Unfortunately, neither your excitement nor your PC's performance lasts.

Whether your hard drive is running out of space or your system takes forever to run simple tasks, it might be worth your time to try and revive it before replacing it. Here are some spring cleaning tips to revive your Windows PC:

Free up disk space The enormous size of modern multimedia files can eat up your hard-drive storage quickly. What … Read more

Tweak your system safely

If you're not already a pro at using the command line, OnyX is a solid choice for conducting routine maintenance and tweaking the interface on your Mac. This free utility shares much of the functionality of applications like Cocktail (which its help files suspiciously resemble), and it can help you with everything from checking SMART status on your disks to configuring the Dock, Finder, and Dashboard and Expose to your liking.

OnyX can even help you run Unix utilities, change your desktop to an animated background, and unlock hidden functions in apps like Safari and iTunes. As with all … Read more

Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions how to manage corruption in the EFI boot loader in OS X or manage disks without one, the necessity of the OS X "periodic" scripts and whether or not they need to be rigorously scheduled, and a sudden instance where the desktop and screen contents appear larger than the size of the screen itself. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you … Read more

Troubleshooting-utility news and updates

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates for a couple of maintenance tools, and a great option for managing launch daemon and launch agent files, as well as a couple of hardware monitoring tools.

Maintenance The popular maintenance tool Cocktail has been updated … Read more

Troubleshooting utility news and updates

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates for maintenance tools and file handling tools (primarily to address Lion compatibility problems), in addition to a couple of system monitoring tools.

MaintenanceIn maintenance tools this week, the robust hardware diagnostics tool TechTool Pro has been … Read more