In the recent months, it seems that there has been a huge number of my friends and family who have rushed out and bought a Mac of some variety. This has meant that I have been called upon much more than usual, in order to help with questions about software, keyboard shortcuts as well as some quite tricky things.

I myself have a Mac toolkit. That is, I have a set of things that I do every time I set up a new Mac. It’s a tried and trusted method of getting a Mac up and running, and ready for what you need it to do.

Like any good insurance policy, you have one but hope you never need to use it. But you’ll regret it if you don’t have one in the first place.

So here is, in a nutshell, the steps I normally take to set up a new Mac:

- Install OS X
- Install browsers
- Install Utils and Drivers
- Install Apps

The good thing about setting up a Mac is that you can leave stuff off your computer that you don’t actually need. You can of course load your hard drive with as many programs as you can possibly manage, but I myself prefer a leaner approach to setting up my software. So, in the next couple of articles I’ll be taking you through the entire procedure of setting up your Mac setup toolbox. For now, you might want to consult this article and make some disk images of your software that arrived on disc.