Free App of the Week: IceClean
One of the little digs that Mac lovers like to tell Windows tolerators is that there is far less maintenance and housekeeping necessary on OS X than on Windows. System utilities, like cache cleaning, drive defragmentation, etc. happen in the middle of the night within the Unix-based core of OS X, and generally keep the system running smoothly. But this depends on the user keeping their machine on through the night to allow these tasks to run. You DO keep your Mac on all night, don’t you?
But sometimes, OS X gets messy, and performance begins to slow. Temporary files, trash, deleted apps with leftover scraps, and other annoyances begin to build up. At that point, it’s time to clean house.
For the last several months, I’ve been using a great free app called IceClean from MacDentro. It is one of the best general system utilities I have found, and it significantly improves the performance of my 17″ Macbook Pro. If you don’t have it yet - get it.
There are quite a few robust utility packages on the market, at a variety of price ranges. But the most attractive thing about IceClean (aside from the price) is its simplicity. It is basically an aggregator of system utilities you could find and perform on your own within OS X, but packages them into a nice front end that makes them all accessible from one app. 
I use my MacBook for a lot of different apps and tasks, from the standard Office apps to the full Creative Suite 3. After a couple of weeks of intense work, I notice a reduction in performance, even with 3Gig of RAM on the latest Intel Dual Core Duo processor. 10 minutes after running a few of the cache cleaning and other system utilities, my machine performs just as when I removed it from the box. The software works both on PowerPC and Universal.
apple reporter, leigh fatzinger, iceclean, ice clean, apple, mac, os x
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