Firefox and its elusive “Temp Directory”…
When you view the web using any browser, whether it be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc., your computer stores all the HTML, images, and other files as you go in a temporary location on your computer. Typically these files are cleared out once the specified size limit is reached, however more savvy users (see: nerds) prefer to have this done on a more frequent basis. Some also prefer to change the location where these files are stored to avoid clutter or hard drive performance knocks. Having an SSD as my OS drive, I choose to store these files on a separate HDD.
For firefox users, changing your "Temp Directory" isn't quite as easy as it is in Internet Explorer. In fact, no matter how hard the average Joe looks for it, he'll find himself either tearing what hair he has left out, or giving up... So here you go!
1. Open Firefox and in the address bar, type: about:config
2. You'll get a message about 'voiding your warranty', click the button that says "I'll be careful, I promise!"
3. Right-click anywhere in the browser window and chose New > String.
4. It will prompt you to "Enter the preference name", type browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and hit OK.
5. It will then prompt you to "Enter string value", here you enter the location of where you want your temp files to be stored. I have mine on Y:\TEMPNET (Y:\ is the letter for my other HDD).
6. Close and re-open Firefox and your new settings will be in effect.
Windows 7, (Disable) Nagle’s Algorithm, and gaming…
Alright, so I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (7600). I noticed in some of the games I frequent (sadly WoW being the main one) that I was sitting around 112ms~ latency. Much like HDTV buffs notice the most minute imperfections in video, gamers can basically feel the delay between when they enter a command and when their game performs the intended command. You can essentially cut your latency in half by disabling Nagle's Algorithm... I dropped down to a 53ms~ average.
iStat Menus
iStat Menus will put valuable resource information in your menu. I only have it showing CPU, memory, and Bandwidth usage, but it also has the ability to show drive usage, temperatures, fan speeds, date and time with more in depth calendar, etc.
My iStat Menu configuration.
The configuration screen is pretty simple to decipher and you can check for updates from here as well.
Configuration screen in System Preferences.
Product Type: Freeware (donations accepted by developer).
Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X
Along the way I'm finding some useful utilities that help me better utilize my system how I want. Because I have a 320GB drive and a 750GB drive, I partitioned the 320GB in half (150GB~ HFS+ for OSX and 150GB~ NTFS for Vista). I will document how I formatted these volumes this way when I get around to doing the retail installation of OSX.
Anyways, I use the 750GB drive as a data/documents storage volume for both OSes formatted as NTFS. I formatted it NTFS because out of the box OSX can view NTFS volumes but not write to them, whereas Windows can't even view HFS+ volumes (out of the box).
Since you can already view NTFS volumes mounted on your desktop in OSX just as you would any other HFS+ volume, the only aspect left is writing to it. Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X is a lightweight driver that allows you to write to NTFS formatted volumes within OSX just as you would a HFS+ volume, its seemless and doesn't require launching of an application.
You can also use the included MacBrowser to read/write to your HFS+ formatted volumes while in Windows.
Product Type: Shareware $39.95 // Trial Period: 10 days fully functional.