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Just opened my new MB! some questions...

H

hatcher146

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 26, 2007
419
0
north carolina
hey everyone! I have just opened my new macbook! its great! i love it! this is my switch over to apple from windows. I have a few questions. if you could help that would be great! bear with me as these questions might sound idiotic, haha but im new!

first-the macbook that i got said it came with 120 gb of storage. on the "finder" window i think it says 94.05, i know that 120 wont be on the macbook because the OS takes up some, but did it take up 25 gb? where can i look on my macbook to find the amount of storage that i have left. thanks!

second-i am connected to a network right now and the signal indicator shows full connection, but is there a way to see what the speed is or any other info on my connection? thanks!

third-the battery monitor, i have it plugged in right now, when its unplugged will it show my remaining battery life? thanks!

fourth-any software that you might reccomend? any tips on how to keep my MB look new as ever? :) thanks alot guys!
 
there is the Office trial in Apps that you can get rid of , plus some over crap in there as well. iWork trial is also installed and you can get shot of that too to save some space
 
As for the whole 94GB of 120GB, it's because there is trial software and such that are loaded just to give you a preview. You can uninstall most of the junk.
 
as far as conection speed...theres a few websites you can go to to find out your speed..but.. icant think of them..anyone know?

Brad
 
iMacBook said:
As for the whole 94GB of 120GB, it's because there is trial software and such that are loaded just to give you a preview. You can uninstall most of the junk.
Click to expand...

However, as a switcher, don't mistake Apple's iLife suite (iPhoto; iMovie; iDVD; GarageBand; iTunes) for the usual bag of time-limited, third-rate cripple-ware that you may have been used to getting with Windows-based boxes. These are full versions of well-featured programmes ... don't chuck 'em!

Cheers

Jim
 
thanks guys, you've been helpful, i guess i was just more concerned about the storage than anything else. i'll get rid of some trial software. one last question....how do you copy? you cant right click, so copy and pasting...how is that done?
 
Jim Campbell said:
However, as a switcher, don't mistake Apple's iLife suite (iPhoto; iMovie; iDVD; GarageBand; iTunes) for the usual bag of time-limited, third-rate cripple-ware that you may have been used to getting with Windows-based boxes. These are full versions of well-featured programmes ... don't chuck 'em!

Cheers

Jim
Click to expand...

Yup. Very true. Don't delete them!
 
hatcher146 said:
how do you copy? you cant right click, so copy and pasting...how is that done?
Click to expand...
you can right-click. go into system preferences>keyboard and mouse>trackpad and turn on 2-fingered right-click. Now you can right-click by putting 2 fingers on the trackpad and clicking. Otherwise, holding the ctrl button while clicking brings up the right-click dialogue box. Also, command-C is the key combo for copying and command-V is the combo for pasting (same as Windows, but with the command button - the one with the apple on it)
 
That seems like a substantial amount of space taken up. But let's break it down. Drive sizes are listed as unformatted, so in reality that 120 provides about 112 of storage or somewhere there abouts. That's not the operating system yet, just simply the way hard drives are. So now we need to account for a little less than 20 gigs of space. OS X, iDVD themes, iMovie templates, Garageband loops all take up that space. The trial software (Office, iWork) take a few hundred megabytes maybe. Not a big deal there. I'd so a combo between formatting, OS X, and iLife take up a vast majority of that space.

As far as internet speed. Nothing is shown in the menu bar. I'd suggest a good widget to give you this info. I prefer iStat pro but there may be others that do the job just as well.

Battery monitor. It will tell you the time if you select the preference. I'd give more specific instructions, but I'm not near my macbook at the moment.

As far as suggested software, I'd say widgets like Package Tracker, and iCal events are nice to have. I guess Macs ship with it now, but I bought a license of ComicLife and get use out of that from time to time. Handbrake is essential, and free. Disco is cheap and functional DVD/CD burning software. Then of cousre I've always found Quicktime Pro to be worth it.
 
Welcome, I too have a MacBook (1st generation) with a 120 GB hard drive. I also switched from Windows, but that was a few years ago with a Titanium era PowerBook.

And 120 GB isn't really 120 GB. Your (and mine) hard drive is actually about 111 GB. Confusing, I know. It's easier for us to count by 10s, so 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes. However, it's easier for a computer to count by 2's, so 1 GB to a computer is 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30). If you divide 120,000,000,000 bytes on your hard drive by 1,073,741,824 bytes, it works out to about 111 gigabytes of storage.

All hard-drive makers do this, report that their drive as 40, 80 or 120 GB when computers will count it as 37, 74, 111 GB, respectively. I do think that it's a little misleading and confusing for people not aware of this.

Alex R
 
gerbilbox said:
All hard-drive makers do this, report that their drive as 40, 80 or 120 GB when computers will count it as 37, 84, 111 GB, respectively. I do think that it's a little misleading and confusing for people not aware of this.
Click to expand...

80GB drives work out to be 74GB not 84GB.

I'm sure that was just a typo, sorry for being nit-picky :p
 
apunkrockmonk said:
80GB drives work out to be 74GB not 84GB.

I'm sure that was just a typo, sorry for being nit-picky :p
Click to expand...

hehe, yeah it was a typo that I just corrected, my mistake.

No problem, I rather be corrected than be spreading inaccurate information.

Alex R
 
hatcher146 said:
hey everyone! I have just opened my new macbook! its great! i love it! this is my switch over to apple from windows. I have a few questions. if you could help that would be great! bear with me as these questions might sound idiotic, haha but im new!

first-the macbook that i got said it came with 120 gb of storage. on the "finder" window i think it says 94.05, i know that 120 wont be on the macbook because the OS takes up some, but did it take up 25 gb? where can i look on my macbook to find the amount of storage that i have left. thanks!

second-i am connected to a network right now and the signal indicator shows full connection, but is there a way to see what the speed is or any other info on my connection? thanks!

third-the battery monitor, i have it plugged in right now, when its unplugged will it show my remaining battery life? thanks!

fourth-any software that you might reccomend? any tips on how to keep my MB look new as ever? :) thanks alot guys!
Click to expand...

Looks like they've got you covered on questions 1 & 2, so no need for me to reiterate their already excellent information.

If anyone already hit your questions 3 & 4, I apologize for this reply, because it just means I didn't read carefully enough.

Question 3 - By default, the battery monitor just shows the battery icon with a bar inside the battery from which you can estimate the remaining life. If you want more specific information, right-click (or Cmd-click) on the battery icon and choose "Show" from the drop menu. Keep in mind that if you choose to show "Time", what you'll get will be the computer's attempt to predict remaining battery time based on currently running tasks and processor load, etc. As a result, this can be wildly inaccurate, and it can jump all over the place as system load changes. A more accurate indicator is to simply choose to show Percentage. If, at any given time, you'd still like a time prediction based on the current system state, you can just right-click on the icon.

Question 4 - My year-old MB looks almost as new as the day I unboxed it. I use a Marware Protection Pack for the palm rests and clean the casing with iKlear. I carry the laptop inside an InCase neoprene sleeve, inside a STM carrying case, and I still handle it like a baby even though it's not my primary laptop. As for software, run a Google search on "OS X software" and you'll get top hits to a few sites that keep track of tons of good stuff for you to experiment with. I like MacUpdate, VersionTracker, and Pure-Mac.
 
One of the first things I do when I get a Mac... after playing with it briefly of course, is clean install.

Be sure to look for and choose custom install option and uncheck anything that is of no importance to you. I normally uncheck Microsoft Office and iWork trial versions, as well as various languages, printer drivers (keep only those that applies to what I have), and so on.

As for the software, there are plenty of other threads that talks about starter software, but I always install the following freeware on any Macs that I get to setup: Adium X (or Yahoo! Messenger and/or Microsoft Messenger if the person prefers more native IM), Perian, Flip4Mac WMV Component, RealPlayer, StuffIt Expander, latest Flash Player, and Adobe Reader (Preview does not recognize newer PDF versions).
 
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