Use the IrDA menu to avoid slow menubar clock update

Aug 22, '03 10:11:00AM

Contributed by: SpaceBoy

Ever since I bought my TiBook 500 nearly two years ago, I've been annoyed by a strange little slowdown involving the menubar clock. Whenever I woke my TiBook from sleep (usually by opening the screen), everything would be fine ... except it would take anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds for the menubar clock to update to the current time (from whatever time it was when the 'Book was last awake). During this time, many other menu functions would not respond, most irritatingly the Modem menu's "Connect" command. You could click the command, but strangely enough, it would do nothing until the clock updated.

Anyway, while trying to get my Mac to play nice with my new Nokia 6800 phone (the one with the cool flip-over keyboard), I accidently enabled the IrDA menu item (which can be found in the network settings for IrDA in System Preferences; once the menu is enabled, IrDA doesn't have to be turned on or even an active network port). The end result of enabling the IrDA menu is that the menubar clock updates instantly, thus avoiding the odd and frustrating lag.

So, if you can afford to sacrifice a little menubar space for the IrDA menu (and your Mac can run the IrDA menu), you too can totally obliterate this annoying little bug!

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