Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Sound

Using the panes of the Sound panel, you can configure the sound system of your Mac in any of several ways.

Tip

Here's a quick way to jump directly to the Sound panel of System Preferences—from the keyboard, without ever having to open System Preferences or click Sound. Just press Option as you tap one of the volume-adjustment keys on the top row of your Apple keyboard.

Sound Effects Tab

"Sound effects" means error beeps —the sound you hear when the Mac wants your attention, or when you click someplace you shouldn't.

Just click the sound of your choice to make it your default system beep. Most of the canned choices here are funny and clever, yet subdued enough to be of practical value as alert sounds (Figure 9-16).

As for the other controls on the Sound Effects panel, they include:

• Alert volume slider. Some Mac fans are confused by the fact that even when they drag this slider all the way to the left, the sound from games and music CDs still plays at full volume.

  POWER USERS' CLINIC: Storing Apple Software Updates

  The great unspoken migraine of Software Update is this: If you ever reinstall Mac OS X from its original CD or DVD (when you install a new hard drive or move to a new com-puter, for example), you'll have to download and install all relevant updates again. That is, if your Mac came with Mac OS X 10.5 and iPhoto 7.0.1, you'll have to download and install the 10.5.1 updater, the iPhoto 7.0.2 updater, and so on.

  Fortunately, although you can't skip the reinstallation process, you ...