New Macbook Pro user! (with questions!)

[Dreamer2go]

Hello!
I'm a new switcher, and I'm on my 3rd day using my mac. Love it so far! Not much defects at the moment. Only maybe a bit too hot while playing wow. Goes up to 70c sometimes. But I think it's ok....

Anyways
I have a few questions. Would appreciate if you answer it.

1. There are some trial softwares such as Aperture, iWork, Microsoft Office... I won't be using them, and they are hogging the hard drive space. Is it ok if I delete them?

2. Since I'm new to Mac, if I "delete" them in windows, I have to UNINSTALL it...how do I do it in my mac? Do I just drag the file to the trash can, and empty the trash?

3. I would like to ask how should I treat my battery. Right now, it's at 100% charged. Should I remove it? My friend told me that if I leave the battery 100% charged, and I'm still plugged to receive power, the battery will deteriorate faster....is that true?

4. Can my mac view High Definition movies? (I have a 15.4inch version SR MBP) Also, in Leopard, it says the DVD player will receive an upgrade...so does that mean I can start buying HD DVDs or something? Or do I still need to upgrade the 8X Superdrive?

Thank you for your time.
Really appreciate it!

 

[72930]

1. There are some trial softwares such as Aperture, iWork, Microsoft Office... I won't be using them, and they are hogging the hard drive space. Is it ok if I delete them?

2. Since I'm new to Mac, if I "delete" them in windows, I have to UNINSTALL it...how do I do it in my mac? Do I just drag the file to the trash can, and empty the trash?

Yes, but some come with an installer in the App's folder. AppZapper is good for some large things without uninstallers, like iDVD if you don't want them

 

[Igantius]

psychofreak is dead right, AppZapper is really nifty for this kind of thing.

re: battery health - there's a guide on Apple's support pages. I don't have the link to hand but if you go to www.apple.com/support and check the MBP section, you'll find it no problem (or do a search for 'battery calibration').

Not sure about watching High-Def on your MBP or what the DVD player changes in Leopard will be - sorry. But upgrading the DVD burner is pretty much a non-starter.

 

[Osarkon]

Or instead of using software that costs money to remove programs efficiently, you could use the free alternative uApp. Works great for me.

 

[Sopranino]

Hello!
I'm a new switcher, and I'm on my 3rd day using my mac. Love it so far! Not much defects at the moment. Only maybe a bit too hot while playing wow. Goes up to 70c sometimes. But I think it's ok....

Anyways
I have a few questions. Would appreciate if you answer it.

1. There are some trial softwares such as Aperture, iWork, Microsoft Office... I won't be using them, and they are hogging the hard drive space. Is it ok if I delete them?

2. Since I'm new to Mac, if I "delete" them in windows, I have to UNINSTALL it...how do I do it in my mac? Do I just drag the file to the trash can, and empty the trash?

3. I would like to ask how should I treat my battery. Right now, it's at 100% charged. Should I remove it? My friend told me that if I leave the battery 100% charged, and I'm still plugged to receive power, the battery will deteriorate faster....is that true?

4. Can my mac view High Definition movies? (I have a 15.4inch version SR MBP) Also, in Leopard, it says the DVD player will receive an upgrade...so does that mean I can start buying HD DVDs or something? Or do I still need to upgrade the 8X Superdrive?

Thank you for your time.
Really appreciate it!

Answers
1) Aperture is a thirty day trial software, fully functional. You can ditch that software by dragging it to the trashcan. It will leave a couple of very tiny files 'plists' lying about the system but they are very tiny and won't clog up your system. iWork is also trial software and can be removed the same way as Aperture. M$ Office has a built in uninstaller which will remove the program for you.

2) See 1

3) If you haven't calibrated your battery yet here is what you do. (since you're already fully charged) Run on the batteries until the system goes to sleep on its own. Then leave in sleep mode for a minimum of 5 hours. Recharge to full, your battery is now re-calibrated. Repeat that process once every 3 months.

4) No to either HD DVD or Blu Ray.

Sopranino

 

[ScottDrummer]

so is there any point in having the HD screen (other than for a better overall resolution) if there is no feasible way of getting HD content on the MBP?
HD content long enough to worth watching would take a while to download. So you cant use HD dvds on the superdrive?

 

[hvfsl]

If you want to watch HD movies on your Mac (when Leopard comes alone), you have 2 options:

1) Upgrade your internal DVD drive to a BluRay or HD-DVD drive. Although unless you are use to taking apart computers, you will probably want to find someone else or a shop to do this.
2) Get an external HD-DVD or BluRay drive. You can ether get an already external one (like the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive which uses USB2) or get an internal drive and put it inside an external enclosure.

Although unless you get a really good deal on a HD-DVD drive, I personally don't recommend getting one because BluRay looks like it will win the format war, so it's hard to predict how long HD-DVD will last, plus a number of studios (Fox, Disney, Sony) only put their HD movies on BluRay.

 

[Adamo]

Although unless you get a really good deal on a HD-DVD drive, I personally don't recommend getting one because BluRay looks like it will win the format war, so it's hard to predict how long HD-DVD will last, plus a number of studios (Fox, Disney, Sony) only put their HD movies on BluRay.

And some studios only put theirs on HD-DVD. The sales are too small on both formats to decide on who will be successful. Porn is only allowed on HD-DVD and not BluRay, that decided DVD.

 

[TimJim]

1. Yup.

2. Yes. For most programs thats what you do, some programs that are more complex might need a program called AppZapper to delete it all

3. If you leave it plugged in for most of its days, make sure to calibrate the batter about once a month. Info can be found here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284

4. Yes. But your mac wont be able to play HD DVD's, even though the software may be able to play it, the hardware still cant. If you really need the HD DVD player, i suggest getting an external drive.

 

[thesutex]

the best thing to do when you get a new mac is to reformat it straight away if you want to free up disk space. It comes installed with several gigs worth of printer drivers and languages you dont need!

in the installer you just custom install and check out what you dont need =)

 

[hvfsl]

And some studios only put theirs on HD-DVD. The sales are too small on both formats to decide on who will be successful. Porn is only allowed on HD-DVD and not BluRay, that decided DVD.

But the only big studio with exclusive HD-DVD support is Universal. In the end of the day, people buy these players to watch movies, it doesn't matter how cheap a format is, if it doesn't have the movies people want, people won't buy it.

If you just look at the big movies this summer:

Spiderman 3 - BluRay
Shrek 3 - HD-DVD/BluRay
Die Hard 4 - BluRay
Fantastic Four - BluRay
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - BluRay
Transformers - HD-DVD/BluRay
Simpsons - BluRay
Ocean's 13 - HD-DVD/BluRay
The Bourne Ultimatum - HD-DVD
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - HD-DVD/BluRay

If you have BluRay, you will miss out on 1 movie, if you have HD-DVD you will miss out on 5.

Plus the porn thing isn't true. You can get porn on BluRay and even if you couldn't, it wouldn't be the deciding factor in this war. It was different back in the VHS days because the only other way of seeing porn was in 'special' cinemas. With VHS, people could watch it in their own homes. The internet of course made it even easier to watch because you could now download it, rather than going to a shop or ordering it.

 

[Dreamer2go]

appreciated all your replies! Helps me a lot!

I have two more questions

usually, a clean install of Mac OSX means it'll take up how much harddrive space? Meaning, what is the default size of Mac OSX + iLife programs?

and finally
I have a external harrdrive that is full of anime (.avi format), and I used it for my windows machine. I plugged it to my mac, and nothing shows up! How come? (It works for my windows machine, but not my mac)

Thanks for your time

 

[thesutex]

appreciated all your replies! Helps me a lot!

I have two more questions

usually, a clean install of Mac OSX means it'll take up how much harddrive space? Meaning, what is the default size of Mac OSX + iLife programs?

and finally
I have a external harrdrive that is full of anime (.avi format), and I used it for my windows machine. I plugged it to my mac, and nothing shows up! How come? (It works for my windows machine, but not my mac)

Thanks for your time

OSX installs tons of printer drivers and languages you dont need! It`s like a couple of gigs, and then you can click away the trial apps too..

For the second one, open disk utility and see if it shows up there =) my myBook shows right away, but another ext drive used like 5 min to appear..

 

[Jestered]

There is not supposed to be anything wrong with keeping the computer plugged in. The computer/battery has a trickle discharge that happens when the battery is fully charged and still plugged in. You can't overcharge the battery because of this.

DO NOT take out the battery and run it without. You can of course, but I would not advise it. I actually did this when I got my MBP SR, because it usually sits on my desk plugged in, but I noticed that it ran very slow. I ran benchmarks on the computer and the performance dropped big time. It was scoring lower on xbench and Geekbench than my old PowerBook G4 (much slower). It wasn't until I put the battery back in that I got my performance back. If you remove the battery you will lose more than half the speed of the computer (at least I did and it did the same thing on a friends).

 

[Fayler]

Since this seems to be a good place to put it...

Does the MBP 15" Screen DISPLAY hd video in hd?

 

[newmacguy88]

With all the discussion of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, I'm curious do those players play regular dvds? I remember people saying that macs may eventually have Blu-ray built in and I have a huge regular DVD collection and I sure don't want to have to replace a bunch of movies....

 

[Dreamer2go]

OSX installs tons of printer drivers and languages you dont need! It`s like a couple of gigs, and then you can click away the trial apps too..

Is there a way to delete the language packs? As well as printer drivers?

 

[DavoMrMac]

Don't forget for HD content their is masses of trailers on the Apple site and others, plus lots of HD stuff elsewhere, like the BBC website.

 

[SirCrumpet]

Since this seems to be a good place to put it...

Does the MBP 15" Screen DISPLAY hd video in hd?

The 15" display runs at a native resolution of [SIZE=-1]1440x900.

High definition is generally split into 720 ([/SIZE]1280 × 720) and 1080 (1920 × 1080), so to answer your question, it will run 720 video without a problem, but will have to scale down any 1080 content.