Deleting Widgets, Installing RAM and Setting a Custom Color for the Desktop

Welcome to My First Mac's Q&A column. It is said that Macs are easier to use, but they are still complex in their own right. Here are a few questions we have received lately from readers like you. Sometimes we reformat the questions for clarity and presentation.

This week we have questions about getting rid of unwanted widgets, deciding whether to install RAM, and creating a custom desktop color.

		How do I get rid of a widget I downloaded?
		Once it's been downloaded and installed, you can close the widget by pressing the option button, and then click the X that appears once you move your cursor over the widget. Alternately, you can click that little + sign down in the lower left. That brings out the Widget dock-bar-thing. When that's showing, all the close buttons on the widgets appear. If you want to remove it from your row of widgets below, click the Manage Widgets… button next to the + button which is now a X button. That brings forward the Widgets manager widget. There you can uncheck any widgets you don't want to see anymore in the bar.
		I'd like to add RAM to my MacBook. Is that something I can do myself?
		I suggest you do and save some money. There aren't many parts of your new Mac that Apple allows you to upgrade, but RAM is one of them. On most Macs, it pretty easy to get to the RAM and replace or add to it. When you do this, you'll gain some confidence working on your Mac and you'll probably come away with more appreciation for Apple's industrial design. Because doing it yourself is approved by Apple, the process is covered in your manual. If you didn't keep yours, you can download another here on Apple's website.
		How can I set my desktop color to any of my choosing? 10.4 seems to only let me use one of the 8 preset colors.
		Yeah, 8 colors seems pretty weak. Here's the way around that. If you have a graphics editor like Photoshop or the like, fill a window with some solid color. If you don't, try going to Kuler from Adobe and playing with some colors there. Once you have a patch of color you like anywhere on your screen, take a quick screen capture of just that spot. To do that, press cmd-shift-caps lock-4. That brings up cross-hairs that you can click and drag around just the color patch on your screen. When you let go, you'll hear the shutter sound and a screen capture PNG file will appear on your desktop. It's probably called Picture 1. The final step is to open the Desktop and Screensaver Preference pane and drag that file into the box in the upper left. Ta-da! Your desktop is that color.

You can send in your questions via the Contact page or email us at editor[AT]myfirstmac[DOT]com. Because of the volume of email we receive, we can't reply to each and every question personally. We read each question that comes in and reply to the ones that fit the scope of this column. We also save some questions for future columns.

If you need your specific question answered right away, try asking it in the Comments section of a related article.

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