is it safe to download the mackeeper?

And in 4.5 years Sophos saved your Mac from how many virus attacks? Let me answer that for you: exactly none.

Sophos and all other virus software is a waste of time in terms of protecting your mac.

Their only possible use is to protect a Windows installation on your mac, or to scan your emails/downloads before you pass on an infected file to others

I haven't used any antivirus software on any of my Macs for over ten years, and have had exactly 0 problems because of any lack of antivirus software. Past experience is no guarantee, of course, but I have no intention of installing antivirus software until there is a report of an actual virus I should be worried about. It will probably come some day, but I'm not holding my breath (nor installing antivirus software) while waiting for it.

You certainly don't need any "maintenance utility" to keep your mac running well, but your mac may accumulate junk over time that you can live without it if you find the HD filling up and space is a problem. You can use OmniDiskSweeper or DupeGuru to find your own redundant files.

Don't use either of those without backing up first though, and don't go messing with any stuff that you don't know what it is.

mmmm, I agree more with Thomas: all caches that take space are cleaned automatically by the Mac (Daily, Weekly and Monthly).

All files that you willingly stored should be cleaned once in while when you want to get rid of them: you know in what folders you have stored them.

The Sweepers that Softwater mentioned, may help you with that but they are basically a "finder" that sorts on File Size, you can do the same in Finder by clicking the size column.

LexSchellings wrote:

The Sweepers that Softwater mentioned, may help you with that but they are basically a "finder" that sorts on File Size, you can do the same in Finder by clicking the size column.

Finder won't do what dupeGuru does, but you're right that it will do what OmniDiskSweeper does. The difference is that ODS offers a much clearer visual interface, and it will also show you stuff that Finder won't unless you really mess around with Finder's settings (agreed, this might be a bad thing in the hands of the inexperienced 😎).

I'd also point out that both ODS and dupeGuru are free, so the user can easily check them out and dump them if they don't like them.

Hi Softwater, I expected your reply... 😉

Personally I think that getting routine to using Finder is the best way for a mac user.

But, do not take my remarks personally, I did not want to criticize...😁

LexSchellings wrote:

I did not want to criticize...😁

The thought never crossed my mind... 😝

LexSchellings wrote:

Personally I think that getting routine to using Finder is the best way for a mac user.

Your mission to properly educate other users may or may not have merit. Personally, I try to just answer the questions that people ask, rather than impose my own moral perspective on others. 😉

Are we done?

I don't think it's a question of "morality." I simply like to leave my hard drive as free of non-Apple stuff as possible, and I take it that you are of a similar mind. In that respect, learning to use the Finder instead of non-Apple solutions suits my style very well.

Technically incorrect. A moral perspective is one in which you imply that some behaviour is worthy and to be praised and some other behaviour is unworthy and to be scorned.

Exactly what you did when you stated what is 'best' for other mac users and (didn't...😁) criticize my recommendatioin of alternative software:

LexSchellings pontificated:

Personally I think that getting routine to using Finder is the best way for a mac user.

This time your reply was unexpected 😁. But I did not criticize your Sweeper, just said that you can do it with Finder. Don't come between me and Ronda ! Ha, 😁 Ha. See you around, I appreciate your help to others.

*waves* Hey guys! I just uninstalled MacKeeper. I was on a PC up until last year, so I am still learning the ropes.

What I liked about it is that it told me where duplicate files were and it backed up my harddrive and external drive online.

Do you guys have any suggestions for programs I could use that would do this? I did just download DupeGuru, which brought up all sorts of dupes for me, but they are .jar files, which I have no idea what to do with.

I also downloaded Omni, which has showed me my largest folders, but I am not sure what I can clean or keep. I was much, much more PC literate and hate not knowing my way around the MAC. Any tips would be so very much appreiciated!

There is one thing that is the same for PC and Mac: backups...backups...backups.... And, as Ronda said: a clone is even better because you can boot from it.

For Mac you should "forget" a lot that was necessary in Windows:

NO defragmentation needed, NO cleaning of caches needed (OSX takes care of that automatically), NO antivirus apps please and NO antimalware please (they serve at nothing and even can do harm, built in in Mac OS, download all updates), NO tuners/optimizers and such needed.

Imagine all the time you have now free to do what you want, time that you used to worry about the security and efficiency of your Windows PC !

As for your question of "doubles": some apps have built in a possibility to show "doubles", in general you can use Finder sorted by name or time in the list view, and you read the doubles easily by checking the size date etc. Doubles also have the -1 or even 02 added to the name.

Searching: If you do not want resources "spilled" by the indexing of the "Spotlight" app, turn off Spotlight and use a (free) app like "FindAnyFile or "Easyfind" to search for files.

Ooh! Thank you for all of the wonderful tips! I do have a fairly new Western Digital harddrive. I have yet to be able to back my MAC up to it, since I guess it is read only for my MAC. I am not sure how to to change that, I bought it originally for my PC. I have a bunch of stuff on it, so I can't re-write it without backing everything up. Do you have any suggestions on how to do that or how I should proceed?

Over the past few weeks I am getting the start up disk full message, so I know I need to get some stuff off my HD and onto my external drive, but I also have a sneaking suspicion there is something else going on, because I really don't think I have used that much space.

It is so nice, though, to not have to worry about keeping it clean like a PC! Although it is hard to let go over my old cleaning tendencies! LOL

So I'm new to the whole Mac Universe and bad habbits die hard, so here we go. I just had this Mackeeper pop up and so forth and I down loaded it. After doing so I scaned my mac it said I had all these threats and I thought it was fishy so I googled it and found these post. Thought all was well being that I've been told it's hard to get a virus on these macs but still I down loaded it anyways. I just draged them to the trash to uninstall them being that it was what I was suposed to do, but what now? how much truble am I in? I'm really freaked out cause I got this computer to start my dream of opening a clothing line and hate to see I just flushed all my money down the tube!

Please HELP!