Hi Nancy,

Nice article, and thank you. I just tried the dock tip you listed but I think you need to tell your readers that the pop-up menu only comes up when you hold down the mouse button (in my case, the left) and the control key. You don't need to have the special cursor either; as long as you are close to the divider (without having highlighted a program or icon) the menu will pop up!

Nancy -

Great quote about recycling Macs. I would further note that Macs also hold their resale value and a three year old system (like a G4) will still sell on eBay for about $500 - $700, whereas a Dell of comparable age and specs would only garner a tenth of that amount.

BadApple also targeted the iPod line and particularly how toxic batteries are in landfills. I agree wholeheartedly that anything with a battery (including regular disposable batteries) should not be disposed of with regular household trash. However, as for iPods - has anyone ever heard or saw anyone actually throw an old iPod out?

Another way to modify the icons in Finder windows is by clicking on the View menu and selecting the Customize Toolbar command. Many computer users find using combinations of keys more intimidating and difficult to recall than using the menus.

This can also be achieved using the shortcut [Command-3] when a finder window is selected. (Normal Icon View - [Command-1], List View [Command-2])

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Many computer users find using combinations of keys more intimidating and difficult to recall than using the menus.

Yes... And I reckon those users will definitely find the right-click from Windows as an easy solution for that. It IS intuitive to right-click something to *change* it. I've been using PCs since 1991, and switched (for good, I'm not using PCs at home anymore) last more than a year ago, and I can assure you that the right-click is by far the easiest method to edit stuff in your screen. It is the only decent innovative idea from Microsoft, IMHO. But since OS X now incorporates context menus, and since I have my own two-button and scroll mouse, I'm fine with that. The next step would be Apple introducing a multi-button mouse for pro users.

This is a very old debate, I know... But I've used both multi-button mice and single-button mice/ctrl-click, and I must say that even being a graphics design student who is used to perform a lot of actions via keyboard commands and key/mouse click combinations, I still find the ctrl-click combo very awkward to use in day-to-day activities, like, duh, triggering context menus ...

Brutno and Guests, thanks for your additional tips and ideas. They are appreciated.

Besides secure deletion, there is another way to REALLY delete your files. To delete locked files, you can either use get info, and unlock the file, or you can skip the work of changing file properties you are about to delete anyway, and essentially Force-empty the trash. However, I can't actually remember the shortcut for it, and searching help isn't working. Anybody know? I origionally found out from an apple store employee.

While it's true that Macs remain useful much longer than PCs, and thus that the "market share" statistics that are often tossed about are not at all accurate representations of what people are actually using (especially since, as I saw pointed out in a recent column, the "market share" statistics are based on gross revenues of computer companies, including "Wintel's rapid upgrade cycle" -- rather than any measurement of numbers of computers in use), it's also true that the two biggest PC manufacturers are far ahead of Apple on the subject of recycling.

Though it may seem "unfair" that Apple is being targeted on the recycling issue, it's in great part because Apple makes such a fuss about being "politically correct" and leading-edge on social/cultural issues as well as pure technology. It was Mac users, after all, who organized the protest. And the people at the Bad Apple site (http://www.computertakeback.com/bad_apple/bad_apple_biz.cfm) have done their homework. See the recycling report at MacInTouch (http://macintouch.com/recycling.html) for some informative in-depth discussion.

I've never owned a PC, so know nothing about Dell and recycling... except that I was able to recycle a couple pickup loads of old Macs (Pluses, SEs and the like that nobody wants) at a city recycling event that was funded by Dell. It would have cost me $500-1000 (that I don't have) to ship them to Apple's token recycling program.