Though they may be identical in appearance, however, Leopard’s International preference is more powerful. With the necessity to communicate more with your global neighbors, Leopard uses Spotlight, for example, to improve character, dictionary and indexing of German, Thai and Chinese languages. There are even 15 more keyboard layouts, from Tibetan, Kasakh to Persian. You’ll find character palettes for several other languages too. Here’s what you can do in the three—Language, Formats and Input Menu—tabs under the International preference.

• (Language tab) Choose anything from English, Italiano to Polski and Korean.
• You can drag an drop your language preference
• Or, you can click the “Edit List” button to tick whether you want the language to even be a choice or not
• Select or change the order you’d like the languages to be sorted
• Choose the way the words break—standard, US English or Japanese
• (Formats tab) Choose your region and tick to show them all or not
• Customize (rearrange) the way your dates appear by drag and drop (click “Customize…” button)
• The dates can appear by short, medium, long or full (1/10/08 versus January 10th, 2008, for example)
• Under the Times bar, you can also choose how your time appears (7:10 pm versus 7:10:09: PM: GMT + 02:00, for example)
• Under the Numbers bar, you can choose Metric or US measurements • You can also pick which currency to use as default—from Afgani to the Czech Koruna to the US Dollar
• (Input Menu) Turn On/Off the character Palettes
• Letter prediction for Japanese characters (and some other languages)
• See the Name, Input Type and Script (lettering/alphabet style) in the row

Security

Anytime security is an issue on Mac, you can bet that it’s there for reason. On no other machine will you have this many security options. With Leopard, specifically, there are three new categories to choose from—General, FileVault and Firewall. Each of these tabs at the top give you the chance to really secure or un-secure your Mac. If you don’t ever share your computer, keep it at the office and occasionally have some personal information on there, it may be smart to take a gander at some of these new and improved security options.

• (General tab) As always, you can choose to require a password to wake the computer (specific to you as the Master user)
• (For all account users on your computer) Choose to disable the automatic login—necessary especially if the computer is shared or partitioned
• The System Preferences… really allows users to get at the guts. So, you can tick a box to make any changes to passwords. No changes can ever take place if the user doesn’t know the original Master Password
• Auto log out of inactive users: 1 min to 999 min
• Use secure virtual memory—Allows you to use more memory and store more info because the computer writes the info differently. If someone wants to recover information that you wanted gone, for example, turning the virtual memory ON will make this easier. Keep it Off if you use sensitive data
• You can disable the infrared remote that came with your computer (Mac Mini, MacBook, etc)
• Make any remote work with your computer by “Pairing” them
• (FileVault tab) Encrypts your computer’s contents. It will open/close them when you use them as long as you know the Master Password
Set Master Password by following the button’s directions (always remember it)
• Turn ON/Off FileVault
• (Firewall tab) Keep your computer “open” to outside connections
• Turn ON/Off the essential services (Internet WiFi, for example)
• Add specific applications with the Advanced… option

Jeff Graber is CEO of the [url=http://www.macsupportstore.com]Mac Support Store[/url], a Mac consulting-support company. Since 1996, he’s led the company to consult and support over 17,000 Macintosh computers for business clients. Graber’s "Inside Wire" and "Essential Apple" columns appears whenever the spirit moves him.