Dashboard & Exposé
Allows you to change keyboard shortcuts or areas of your screen that activate the Dashboard (a program that displays “Widgets,” or tiny applications on your screen) and Exposé (a feature used to rapidly switch between windows in an application or between applications).

If the Active Screen Corners are turned on, I tend to inadvertently trigger Exposé or Dashboard with my cursor fairly often, so I prefer to leave these turned off.

Energy Saver
Allows you to tell your computer when it should try to sleep or turn off the display in order to save energy and extend your battery life.

If you are using a laptop (PowerBook, MacBook, MacBook Pro), you are able to establish default settings for the times when your computer is connected to the Power Adapter as well as when it is running on battery power. Personally, when I’m using the Power Adapter, I don’t like to have the computer go to sleep, so I set the first slider to “Never.” I don’t mind the display going to sleep after a while, so I typically have the second slider set to about 20 minutes.

When I’m running on the battery, it’s a different story. I’m usually trying to squeeze every last minute of run-time out of my machine, so my energy settings are pretty conservative. My settings for “Battery” have my computer sleeping in five minutes and my display sleeping in one minute. Click on the “Options” tab and make sure those three check boxes are checked. Since the display on your computer is one of the biggest drains on battery life, reducing the brightness of your display definitely helps. I also like to have the battery status displayed in my menu bar for a quick glance at my remaining power. You can also click on the power status icon in the menu bar at any time to change which “Optimization” settings your machine is currently using.

TIP: this is where you can turn off screen dimming on your laptop if that's driving you crazy.

Keyboard & Mouse
Here you can change settings for, you guessed it, your keyboard and mouse (and trackpad if you are using a laptop).

The “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab in this pane can give you insight into some useful (and some not-so-useful) keyboard shortcuts built in to your Mac. If you find some in that list that you think you will never use (or that are interfering with a keyboard shortcut in an-other third-party application), go ahead and uncheck the box to turn that particular shortcut off.

TIP: The most important thing here is to enable right clicking with your mouse and/or 2-finger clicking for your trackpad if you miss right-clicking from the Windows world.

Accounts
Here you can add and delete users from your computer and change settings for each user.

This is also where you would find “Parental Controls” to limit the functionality of specific user’s accounts.

TIP: here is where you can designate applications to automatically launch at startup. You can even have them hide once they launch.

Sharing
If you are using your Mac on a network (in your house or at work), the Sharing preference pane allows you to share information from your computer over your local network and/or over the Internet.

You can also share your computer’s Internet connection with other computers on your wired or wireless network by changing settings in this preference pane.

TIP: this pane has lots of options, so investigate thoroughly. A lot of the Mac ease of use magic is right here if you use it.

Dock
Here you can change the size, position, and properties of the Dock. The Dock is the bar that hold shortcuts to some of the applications on your Mac as well as the Trash and other items. By default, it is placed at the bottom of your screen, but you can change these settings in in this preference pane.

Personally, I like having the Dock automatically hide when I’m not using it. Although it is probably not the wisest use of your computer’s resources, I enjoy the extra screen real estate it gives me. I do, however, recommend turning off the “Magnification” check box.

TIP: you can access much of this pane's controls by control-clicking in an empty spot on the Dock itself.

Desktop & Screen Saver
The Desktop tab allows you to change the background of your desktop. The Screen Saver tab allows you to customize your screen saver settings. If you prefer not have a screen saver come on, set the “Start screen saver” slider all the way to the right to “Never.”

At this point, almost all of us are using LCD displays rather than the old CRT (TV set-type) displays, so screen savers are completely obsolete and unnecessary. That being said, Apple does have some snazzy built-in screen savers. If I was to use a screen saver, my favorite would be the RSS Visualizer. This lets you choose any RSS feed that you have selected in Safari to display in a visually-stunning, interactive format on your monitor. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out.

TIP: there are 3rd party screen savers you can download and load for more variety.

Bluetooth
Here you can change settings for Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a special type of wireless communication used with devices such as some mice, keyboards, printers, headsets, phones, etc.

TIP: if you have no bluetooth devices, just turn it off and save energy.

Date & Time
Just what it sounds like… If your Mac is connected to the Internet on a fairly regular basis, just check the box to “Set date & time automatically” to always keep your computer’s clock up-to-date.

You can also set which time zone your Mac is located in and the way that the current date and time is displayed.

Security
The Security preference pane allows you to turn on and off the FileVault, which can en-crypt all of the files on your hard drive so that they will be unreadable without your login password. This is no joke. If you choose to use FileVault, make sure you don’t forget your password.

In this pane, you can also set some of your other security preferences such as requiring the user to enter a password after the computer sleeps or its screen saver comes on.

.Mac
.Mac (pronounced “dot Mac” ) is Apple’s recently updated (8-7-07) membership-based Internet service that integrates rather seamlessly with many iLife applications (iWeb, iMovie, GarageBand, etc.) and other Mac applications (Mail, Address Book, iCal, etc.). .Mac basically gives you an email address and file storage (currently 10 GB) as well as the ability to use the .Mac functions in the aforementioned applications. In my opinion, the most useful feature of .Mac is the ability to sync things like your Address Book and iCal across multiple Macs.

If you have a .Mac account (you can get a 60-day free trial at www.mac.com), enter your account information in this preference pane and set which items you’d like to sync with .Mac.

Print & Fax
Here’s where you add a new printer for your Mac and set defaults for your printer(s). You can also share printers over your network with other computers.

The Faxing tab allows you to set up your Mac to send and/or receive faxes if you have a modem installed.

Software Update
This is an important one! Periodically, Apple will release important updates to the software programs that are installed on your Mac. These updates are free and typically of-fer nothing but improvements. Sometimes you’ll notice a difference in your programs after updating, but most of the time these updates are just “security” and “stability” updates that will be transparent to the casual user. Though there are, on very rare occasions, updates that can cause some conflicts, I have never had serious problems from an update. Therefore, I recommend that Mac users install any and all Software Updates that come from Apple through the Software Update application.

If you have the two check boxes shown below checked, then your computer will check with Apple every day for available updates and notify you when they are ready to be installed. When the Software Update program pops up, wait until you get to a convenient stopping place in your work, then download and install the updates. Some updates require a restart of your computer after installation.

Sound
The Sound preference pane allows you to choose sound effects and audio input and output options for your Mac.

If you are using an application such as iChat or Skype for voice or video chatting, this is where you can change your audio input and output options to a device such as a head-set.

Spotlight
Spotlight is a built-in search utility for your Mac. In this preference pane you can tell Spotlight which types of files to search and in which order to list the results. You can also tell Spotlight to stay out of particular folders when searching your computer by changing settings in the Privacy tab.

TIP for PhotoShop users: The shortcut to zoom in Photoshop is Cmd-Space Bar, but, by default, this also pulls up the Spotlight function on your Mac. The Spotlight preference pane allows you to change this default behavior with one simple check box.

Universal Access
Universal Access is designed to help those who may need help seeing the information on their screen. Options are available to zoom in on areas of the screen, increase con-trast of colors on the screen, or even read aloud text or other menu items. Additional options are available to flash the screen when an alert occurs, turn on “Sticky Keys” (which allow you to press modifier keys, like Cmd or Shift, in sequence rather than all at once), and use your keyboard in place of a mouse or trackpad.

TIP: this could be a very important pane for you if you have special needs, so look it over carefully.