Stupid Beginner Questions... Options

[jofferman]

Hi all,

I'm now officially a Mac musician - hurrah
While I feel right at home in OS X, there's a few things stupid things I can't seem to fix:

- How do I change the computer's name?
- MacOS / Finder help is broken... how do I fix that?

Also, here's a more music related question: I vaugely recall someone suggesting that journalling should be switched off for better harddisk performance when working with audio... is there any truth in that advise?

thx,
Jim.

[lushbudget]

To change the computer's name you can either A) click once on the text box under you hard drive icon (default name is Macintosh HD) and start typing or B) change it from Disk Utility the same way. If you want to change your Username that is a lot trickier. It requires use of the Terminal and some Unix commands. If you need to do it, write back and I'll give you the instructions.
:)As far as the help system, did you install OS X yourself? If so, did you omit the Help? It's not likely, but it can be done if you use the packages to install instead of the straight-ahead method. In any case. if going to the Help drop down menu yields no results, you may have to reinstall the OS. That is the only way to safely restore Panther's help system (or Jaquar for that matter - BTW which are you using?)
Lastly, regarding disabling journaling - yes it will SLIGHTLY speed up your HD, but NOT RECOMENDED FOR YOUR SYSTEM DISK!! If you are getting sluggish performance out of your external firewire drive (really you should be using a FW external drive for your audio recording, NOT the system disk) then you can disable journaling, but I wouldn't reccomend it anyway - I had trouble when I tried it myself.