First time mac owner...need answers

[MrMacMini]

I have been debating to switch to mac for a few years now, and After having so many issues recently with my pc, I finally decided to make the switch, got my self a basic Mac Mini 2.0 Ghz 1gb RAM 120 HDD last Friday.

1. I have a few questions. When I look in my aplications folder, at the bottom it says I only have 80 gigs of my 120 available. Where did the other 40 go? I'm sure a lot of is used by the OS, but 50 gigs? I only have a few pictures in iPhoto, and downloaded a few free applications. Can anyone shed some light?

2. I've been using iMovie and love it. But I notice that a takes a bit for it to import and export video clips. I created a slide show and when I added a 9min video clip it just dragged. Will upgrading to 4gb of ram help with this?

3. Is there an easy way to see what's using my memory?

I love my mac mini! Thanks for the help and please be nice, since I know nothing about mac.

 

[uberamd]

To see where your space is being tied up, I suggest Disk InventoryX (free, http://www.derlien.com/)

After formatting the drive is around 108GB, so using ~22GB seems about right, especially since you said you are using iMovie.

Also, you may consider an upgrade in RAM, especially when doing video work. 1GB just isn't enough, I kicked my 2.0GHz Mini up to 4GB from 1GB, its a whole new mac.

 

[themoonisdown09]

If you're wanting to upgrade your RAM, I suggest you check out OWC. The prices are very reasonable and they have good service.

 

[duncanapple]

I remember my first iBook had something like 256mb of Ram. It would take awhile just to render a single transition in iMovie. I put 640mb in there and it was night and day. So going from 1-4GB, a whole new mac is probably an understatement lol! (side note, as memory price is always interesting, that 640mb of ram cost almost $90 back then. Now a 4gb kit of DDR3 ram is around $60-70!)

 

[plinden]

After formatting the drive is around 108GB, so using ~22GB seems about right, especially since you said you are using iMovie.
.

Nothing to do with formatting - drive manufacturers give disk space in terms of bytes, so 120GB is 120,000,000,000 bytes. Computers are based on binary, so 1GB = 1024x1024x1024, so every computer (all computers, whether OS X, Windows or Linux) reports a 120GB drive as 111GB. It's still the same number of bytes.

So that means the OP has used about 31GB. The OS plus preinstalled programs like iLife comes to about 25GB. A couple more GB can be used up by sleep images and memory pages etc. 31GB seems a little high for a totally new install, but we don't know exactly what the OP has put on it. It's the right ball park though.

 

[Corrosive vinyl]

The way to see what your computer is doing is to go to go>utilities.>Activity Monitor. It has a pretty good breakdown of what your memory,CPU, etc are doing. Also you can get a free app or widget called iStat pro by iSlayer, which is popular. You can find them all here.

 

[MrMacMini]

Thanks for all the info. I can put my mind to rest now. I thougt I had broken something lol. I'll be upgrading my RAM in the next coming weeks and my HDD after that.

I'm enjoying my Mac very much, especially now that I'm it using with a dual screen setup (wasn't able to do it with my Old pc).

 

[britboyj]

Thanks for all the info. I can put my mind to rest now. I thougt I had broken something lol. I'll be upgrading my RAM in the next coming weeks and my HDD after that.

Crucial is also a good site for RAM.

I'm always a big fan of doing a complete erase and install from the discs included when I buy a new computer.

I always uncheck X11, Printer Drivers etc and so I don't end up with things I don't actually need. (There's nearly 5GB in Printer Drivers! I'll install the one I need thanks!)

Cool way to free up space is to download a program like XSlimmer (Well worth the $12.95) and MonoLingual, which both remove unnecessary languages and binaries (So on a new Mac it would kill the PowerPC binaries as it only needs Intel to run) which can free up a surprising amount of space without impacting the program!