BACKGROUND

Before even beginning to install your Mac (either hardware or software), it is best to give careful consideration to the computing environment. Is it safe for your system?


POWER PROTECTION

The single greatest source of computer hardware, software, network, and directory problems comes from unclean AC power (power surges and sags). The only way to resolve this is to connect a quality battery backup (commonly called a UPS) between your computer and the AC outlet.

Why a UPS and not a surge protector? After all, a UPS will cost from $100-$700 or more, and a surge protector can be purchased for under $50. Here are the dominant reasons:

• Surge protectors only protect against surges, UPS protects against surges and sags. Both are dangerous to your computer equipment.
• Most surge protectors don’t even protect against surges once the protector is 6-12 months old.
• Even when new, many surge protectors can’t respond fast enough to block a typical surge.
• Even the best surge protectors do not protect against surges and sags induced by the other equipment connected to it.
  

Most UPS systems have multiple outlets to connect your electronics. These are typically divided into “battery backup” and “surge only” outlets. You must connect your computer, external storage devices, card readers, and monitor to the battery backup outlets. Scanners, lights, and other miscellaneous equipment may be placed on the surge only outlets. Never use a surge protector or power tap on any UPS outlet. It not only voids your UPS warranty, but functionally removes the protection offered by the UPS.

Your UPS will need adequate volt-amperage to support all your battery backup devices. As a general rule, 750 va is the minimum recommended for a laptop. At 1500 va, you have enough power to support an Intel Mac, server or graphics workstation with all the bells and whistles attached. Make sure your computer is connected to a UPS from the first time you power up.

There are several vendors, each with multiple quality and price lines. My recommendation is for American Power Conversion (APC), Belkin, and Tripplite brands as an excellent balance between quality, performance, and price.


AMBIENT TEMPERATURE

Bottom line: If you are feeling uncomfortably warm in your work environment, it’s too warm for your computer. The result of running your computer in a too-warm environment includes: System crashes, corrupted files, damaged hardware.

Removing the cover from the computer case does not lower the “internal” temperature. It will do the opposite, leaving your computer running hotter.

Things you can do to help your Mac keep it’s cool:

• Keep your computer from direct sunlight.
• Allow some breathing space around your Mac. For most models, this means at least 3” around all sides, and don’t place any significant heat barrier (like a book or stack of papers) on top of your Mac.
• If the equipment is in an enclosed cabinet, install an exhaust fan to blow the warm air out of the enclosure area.
• If the above doesn’t do the trick, it will be necessary to either move the equipment to a cooler environment, or to install an air conditioner (it’s ok, you were sweating too much anyway).

PREPARING THE DRIVE

Your internal hard drive arrives out of the box with Mac OS X fully installed. Unfortunately, there is no way to know the integrity of the drive itself. It is common for the magnetic structures on the drive (domains) to be either weakened or flaked off in the process of being bounced around in shipping. It is strongly recommended that you verify the integrity of your hard drive before use. Unfortunately, this involves erasing the drive and reinstalling the OS and applications.

Steps to verify and repair your hard drive:

1. Boot from your Mac OS X Installer DVD.
2. Once you have a menubar (you may need to click the OK or Continue button once), select the Utilities menu > Disk Utility.
3. In Disk Utility, select the hard drive icon from the side bar.
4. Select the Erase tab.
5. Click the Options button.
6. Select the Zero All Data option.
7. Click the OK button.
8. From the Volume Format pop-up menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
9. Click the Erase button.
   

NOTE: Depending on the size of your hard drive and speed of your computer, this may take an hour or more. When the erase process is complete, Quit Disk Utility. You are taken back to the Installer. Follow the on-screen instructions to install Mac OS X.

If you have purchased a new hard drive, either internal or external, you will need to take similar steps. However with a new drive, you have the added issue of format compatibility. Almost all hard drives ship formatted for Windows (typically in FAT32 or NTFS format). Though your Mac has no problem reading and writing to FAT32, by default it can only read from NTFS. Also, these formats tend to be slower on Mac OS X than it’s native HFS+ format.

The process to setup a new hard drive is a bit easier:

1. Connect the new drive to your Macintosh.
2. Launch /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.
3. In Disk Utility, select the hard drive icon from the side bar.
4. Select the Erase tab.
5. Click the Options button.
6. Select the Zero All Data option.
7. Click the OK button.
8. From the Volume Format pop-up menu, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
9. Click the Erase button.

NOTE: Depending on the size of your hard drive and speed of your computer, this may take an hour or more. When the erase process is complete, Quit Disk Utility. You should now see your new drive icon on the desktop.


FIRST USER ACCOUNT

During the Mac OS X installation process you are prompted to create the first user account. This account will have administrator privileges. When logged in with this account the user will be able to do anything on the computer, including: Giving the OK for a virus to infect the computer, delete critical system files rendering the machine unusable, and giving others full control over the machine when you step away from it.

Getting the picture?

Consider the first user account to be one that will be very rarely used. As such, it is best not to give it a name like: “Marc”, or “Marc Mintz”. But perhaps “Marc Admin” would be a better choice. Once you have fully installed the OS, you can then create an additional user account without administrator privileges with a name like: “Marc”.

The OS has many users and groups that are used for internal work. Do not use any of these names for your own user accounts. These names include: admin, amavisd, appowner, appserver, appserverad, appserverad, authedusers, bin, certusers, clamav, consoleusers, cyusimap, daemon, dialer, eppc, everyone, group, interactusers, jabber, kmem, lp, mail, mailman, mysql, netusers, network, nobody, nogroup, operator, owner, postdrop, postfix, qtss, root, securityagent, smmsp, sshd, staff, sys, tokend, tty, unknown, utmp, uucp, wheel, windowserver, www, xgridagent, xgridcontroller.

I understand you are chomping at the bit to name your user account “xgridcontroller”, but please resist the urge.


PASSWORDS

Though Mac OS X is among the world’s most secure operating systems, if you have a password that is easy to break, you have no security. Current hacking utilities can automatically try more than 10,000,000 password attempts on your computer per second!

A “good” password is one that will take so long to break that the hacker will move on to an easier target. How to create a good password? Don’t! Instead, use a passphrase.

A passphrase is a few words that you can easily remember. It should be at least 14 characters in length, though many security experts are recommending at least 23. Even better if you can include non-alpha-numeric characters, such as: “I love Coco’s eyes in the evening!”, which is far easier to remember than the shorter “$9?v2sQ%” that your IT department wants to assign to you. And infinitely more secure.

Tags: hardware, software, installation, power protection