Not only is this support free, it is well organized – across a few key forums and discussion groups, which I shall review below – and is dished out freely by Mac experts who often reply to new queries (or cries for help!) within hours of the original post.

What do such Mac users in these forums get in return? Just some good karma, and a slight warm glow from helping out people with their knowledge.

Being in a minority of global computer users – up against the vast majority of Windows punters – actually proves to be an advantage in terms of getting clear, easy-to-search-for, and helpful free tech support for the Mac. Make a Google search for a Windows-related query or issue, and I’ll guarantee that most of the search results will be for some useless software that will claim to assist in your plight. While a similar search for a Macintosh-related issue will proffer forums and Mac-related tech blogs which have – very likely – already covered and solved your question.

So, if you haven’t already tried, here are five very useful and very active resources which you can browse freely for answers. If you wish to post to the forums you will need to register (again, for free).

Five Top Mac Forums/Resources:

Apple’s very own “Discussion” boards are very well organized by type of software and hardware. Posters are more likely seeking support or answers, than actually ‘discussing’ stuff, so it’s likely that, whatever your query, it’s already been done here.

The MacRumours Forums are a bit more discursive, with space for recent tech news and speculation on future models, as well as various tips and hacks for iPhone and iPod Touch users. More uniquely, these forums also spread into the realms of discussing digital photography, design and graphics, and various other special interests – all from a Mac perspective.

Your best bet if you have a query, however, is the MacOSXhints Forums where the principal sections are dedicated to “OS X Help Requests” which explain how, if seeking assistance from the community, to include as much detail as possible in order that a more expert Mac user might lend a hand.

Similarly, the forums of the MacOSX site are dedicated to community-based help, though it’s not so active – and a bit random – when compared to the afore-mentioned three forums.

One tech blog deserves a special mention – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (also known as TUAW) which has such a wealth of tips over recent years that, when searched via TUAW’s own search box, represent a useful way to learn new features of some complex software such as Aperture or iLife. It’s not a forum, granted, but I’ve found it useful in terms of teaching me new aspects of some software I thought I knew quite well already.

Now, with those five resources – along with TipTrickMod, of course – you’re better equipped to get to grips with your Mac. And, needless to say, support is a two-way thing, so if you feel you can assist a fellow Mac user then weigh in on their post, and feel the karma coming your way.

Many applications on your Mac, however, come bundled with an array of ‘localizations’ so that one release of a company’s app can suit the needs of practically all of their global users. But that represents a waste of valuable disk space for 99.9% of people who use their apps in just one language, and will never need to run iTunes, or Skype, in anything but their native tongue.

Thus, most apps on your Mac have nestled inside them a number of language localization files that you can notice by the designation “.lproj”. Even if you opted not to install other languages when you first installed Tiger or Leopard, many 3rd party apps will have a number of “.lproj” files, which do nothing but use up space and make your apps needlessly hefty.

If you’re curious to see these files, just right-click on an application, and select “Show Package Contents”. Then click on “Contents”, and next on “Resources”, and in here you will find all the language localizations mixed in with other bits which make up the app’s building blocks.

All you actually need are the main localizations that you currently use. So, for English-speakers, you could safely trash all the “.lproj” files within your apps except for the “English.lproj” one, and your app would be unharmed, and your Mac would lose quite a bit of weight, so to speak. The saving is likely to be somewhere from 2 to 4 gigabytes.

Slim down

To automate and ease this process across all your original and 3rd party apps, the open-source Monolingual will do the job. That light-weight app can not only remove unnecessary languages files within apps, but also remove – if you so wish – other language’s input methods, and even older architectures, such as the ‘Power PC’ framework. That seems somewhat excessive, so I’ll stick with the idea of removing the languages inside apps. This is done within Monolingual by checking the boxes next to a language’s name to remove that “.lproj” file wherever it is found.

Personally, I just unchecked the “English” option – and all national variations of English – to ensure that my apps remained in my native tongue. The first time I ran Monolingual, it took over 30 minutes to clean up within every app, which slowed my Macbook rather, so it would be wise to run this at a quiet time.

Image: Simply check the unwanted languages with Monolingual, then ‘Remove’ them

The space saving for me, on a year-old install of Tiger – now 10.4.11 – was a significant 4 gigabytes, which is space well worth saving with my meagre 80GB hard-drive. I googled to check that it works on Leopard, with commenters on various tech forums confirming that it does, and declaring savings of 3 gigs or more on quite recent installs of Apple’s latest OS.

Monolingual can then be run at intervals of the user’s discretion – it will take a mere few minutes to do it’s magic on later runs – to sort of ‘tidy up’ and keep your Mac’s drive freer for more essential things.