In Chapter 1, “Operating System Theory,” you briefly used the About This Mac feature in...

In Chapter 1, “Operating System Theory,” you briefly used the About This Mac feature in Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. This feature is worth reviewing because it provides a fast way to determine what processor is in a Macintosh computer and the amount of memory. This can save you time, for example, if you are planning to upgrade multiple computers to Snow Leopard and you want to determine which computers have Intel processors and if they have enough RAM for the upgrade. In this project, you review how to open the About This Mac window for information about the processor(s) and RAM.

To open the About This Mac window:

1. Click the Apple icon in the top left corner of the menu bar.

2. Click About This Mac on the menu.

3. The About This Mac window not only shows the operating system version, as you learned in Chapter 1, it also shows the number of processors, the model name and speed of the processors, plus the amount and type of memory installed (see Figure 3-7).

4. Click More Info in the About This Mac window.

5. Make sure that Hardware is highlighted in the left pane.

6. What is the processor speed and how much L2 cache is contained in the processor?

7. In the left pane, click Memory under Hardware.

8. The right pane shows information about the number of memory slots and the RAM (if any) plugged into each slot (see Figure 3-8).

9. How many memory slots are in the computer and how many are empty?

10. Close the window.