Power User Monday Tip of the Week

Handle Your Home Folder

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This is the first of a weekly series on being a power user. Since every week you'll see a new article on Monday, it's smartly called "Power User Monday". If you have any tips, questions or comments please shoot them my way.

Upon switching to OS X, most 9 afficianodos wanted to make X behave like 9. That's when the little hacks to get the trash can to be on the desktop, Apple menu's to come back, and the like all came into power. These things were really popular because no one really knew how to use OS X. Times have changed. To be a power user in OS X you gotta maximize what's given. Here's how to get the best out of the Home Folder:

1. Don't store any personal data outside your Home folder. There's only one exception... If you have a seperate hard drive or partition that certain types of file (media?) stay on. In this case just make sure you remember to back up that drive as well. If everything is in your home folder, Backup (from .Mac) or any other backup tool makes it easy to have all your data. A nice thing about X is that it even stores your prefs in the home folder (Library).
   
   
2. Don't have folders on your Desktop, have aliases that link to folders in your Home Folder. Folders on the Desktop are a waste of time. It may sound odd at first, but the advantage is obvious on a second look. Desktop's get cluttered (just like your real desk can get stacked up and become confusing). I keep an alias of my Documents Folder on my Desktop, as well as another alias for whatever I'm working on (PowerUser Monday for instance). If you still aren't convinced... When you backup your Documents Folder, all of your docs go with it. Otherwise, you'd have to look through tons of folders and sub-folders to get the same backup. Any organization you can add to your computing will speed up your work time, which is great unless you get paid by the hour :).
   
   
3. Put the Home Folder (and any common sub-folders) you use into the Dock. That way with one click you can access anything on your Home folder from any application. Update: Had some people asking how this helps... Click and hold, control click, or (if you have a 2 button mouse) right click on the icon in the Dock and see the folder displayed as a menu. I can't tell you how much this speeds up things, and I see very few people doing it. I have the Home Folder, Documents and Desktop folders in my dock (as well as the Applications Folder).
   
   

The Home folder is the hub of data for OS X. Make it your friend. Check back next Monday!