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New Macbook

anjinha

anjinha

macrumors 604
Original poster
Oct 21, 2006
7,324
206
San Francisco, CA
Finally! After 2 and a half years with a crappy pc laptop I got a beautiful new Macbook! My friends are all jealous. The only bad thing is that the Macbook will atract too much attention and I'm kind of low-profile, but it's worth it.
So, I just have a couple of questions: I noticed that the available disk space was about 55gb, when the hard drive is 80 gb, is this normal? Does the software and OS use so much disk space? Also I wanted to know which features it has that I should know about to make the most of my computer. Thanks a lot. :)
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
Congrats, that's great news! You'll love your MacBook... :)

In terms of features, well, there's really too many to list so I'll leave others to start commenting on that. It's best just to explore, play around and have fun discovering what all your Mac can do. There are built-in timesavers like Expose, of course there's Dashboard, then there are many hotkeys as well which are good in various situations... Play around and let us know if you have any further questions!

In terms of your HDD, make sure you're not comparing GB to Gb for starters. Past that, space is taken up through the formatting of your machine, and then the OS and installed apps take up a lot of room as well.

That being said, here is my list of things you can do to free up hard drive space:

- use OmniDiskSweeper (not free) or my personal favorite WhatSize (free) to determine what all is taking up room on your HDD and where it is located. Delete anything unncessary
- remove GarageBand and iDVD if you do not need them - that should free up around 6 GB right there
- check out /Library/Printers/ - 2 GB of printer drivers that you may or may not need
- use Monolingual to remove the unnecessary language resources from your Mac*
- lastly, you could always use AppZapper to ensure that when you uninstall any programs that all those pesky sub-folders, etc. are deleted

That should just about do it. :cool:

* a note about Monolingual. If you are not careful this can seriously screw up your Mac if it is Intel-based. Basically, leave the Architectures settings alone. If you delete G3, G4, G5 then anything which is PPC-based which will try to run under Rosetta, won't. Otherwise, Monolingual is great. ;)

Hope this helps. :cool:
 
MRU

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,370
8,952
a better place
If you re-install your system with the disk provided you can cut out a lot of the space requirement.


If you do not plan to use

iWork 06 - Then that is a waste of 2gb

iLife 06 - iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, iTunes are all reasonable for their size requirements, however Garageband uses up a good chunk of HDD size. So if you do not require Garageband that is a good program to get rid of.

Microsoft Office 2004 TRIAL - it's a trial. Junk it

Additional Languages - Again another 1gb of space gone

Additional Printer Drivers - again around the same 1gb


All in all you can save a 'huge' amount of space getting rid of some of this extra padding.




Seriously it's about time Apple gave users the opportunity to remove software when they first boot up their mac.
 
smueboy

smueboy

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
778
1
Oz
After formatting and the full install of OS X that comes with the computer 55GB sounds about right. If you want to maximise space, i recommend doing an erase and re-install of the OS, and choosing to remove all languages you don't need, and programs that you may not use such as Garageband etc. that take up a lot of space.

check the Guides for basic mac info.

see these threads for some apps.
Some of the best free ones include VLC (for media), Flip4Mac (for wmv files) etc.

I'm sure you're gonna enjoy your mac!

Edit: i got Sharded and MacRumorUsered! I'm just too slow :(
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
djstarrock said:
I would recommend uApp its the exact same as AppZapper but its free I don't know why no one recommends it.
Click to expand...

Great, thanks for that, I was not aware of that app. It's great that it's free - I will add it to my list of recommended apps along with AppZapper so I can present two options (a free and non-free option) to people in the future. :cool:
 
BlackMax

BlackMax

macrumors 6502a
Jan 14, 2007
901
0
North Carolina
anjinhamarota said:
Finally! After 2 and a half years with a crappy pc laptop I got a beautiful new Macbook! My friends are all jealous. The only bad thing is that the Macbook will atract too much attention and I'm kind of low-profile, but it's worth it.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! You'll love your MacBook. I love mine. :)


~Shard~ said:
- use Monolingual to remove the unnecessary language resources from your Mac
Click to expand...

Didn't know about Monolingual. I'll be checking Monolingual out tonight. :cool:


djstarrock said:
I would recommend uApp its the exact same as AppZapper but its free I don't know why no one recommends it.
Click to expand...

I use uApp too! :D
 
jonharris200

jonharris200

macrumors 6502
Feb 25, 2006
394
7
London, UK
Hey, new black MacBook for me today too!

And... it was a refurb that came with a special surprise ... 2GB RAM.

I'd heard of this happening to others, but here I am and it's happened to me.

Fantastic!!!
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
jonharris200 said:
Hey, new black MacBook for me today too!

And... it was a refurb that came with a special surprise ... 2GB RAM.

I'd heard of this happening to others, but here I am and it's happened to me.

Fantastic!!!
Click to expand...

Nice one! Enjoy your new MacBook and hopefully some of the above tips will help you to ensure you never run out of HDD space! ;) :)
 
jonharris200

jonharris200

macrumors 6502
Feb 25, 2006
394
7
London, UK
~Shard~ said:
Nice one! Enjoy your new MacBook and hopefully some of the above tips will help you to ensure you never run out of HDD space! ;) :)
Click to expand...

Well the HDD is already quite full as I synchronised completely with my existing iMac.

However, I need everything on there for now and can delete some iMovies etc once I have a third copy of everything on my LaCie HD clone.

Cheers for sharing my joy!
 
smueboy

smueboy

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
778
1
Oz
~Shard~ said:
Thanks for that, I wasn't aware of that app either. It's always good to have options! If you do give Monolingual a try, please let me know how the two compare, although I assume they both perform equally as well.
Click to expand...

As far as i know, Delocalizer is no longer being developed, whereas Monolingual is regularly updated.

Just make sure you uncheck all architecture options when using Monolingual, or use the more advanced option that i just discovered here, by excluding the system frameworks and thereby saving the system Rosetta architectures from being deleted [note that i have not tried this, i just unchecked all architectures]
:)
 
anjinha

anjinha

macrumors 604
Original poster
Oct 21, 2006
7,324
206
San Francisco, CA
ok, so i have been messing around with ical, and i just wanted to know one thing, is there any way i can put my class schedule in there so that it appears in every week or do i have to put it manually every week?
 
~Shard~

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
anjinhamarota said:
ok, so i have been messing around with ical, and i just wanted to know one thing, is there any way i can put my class schedule in there so that it appears in every week or do i have to put it manually every week?
Click to expand...

I don't use iCal myself, but there should be some way to set up recurring events I would hope....
 
Killyp

Killyp

macrumors 68040
Jun 14, 2006
3,859
7
Yes, you can repeat in iCal. Select an event, and from the pull out bar on either the right or left of your screen, you should be able to choose to repeat it...
 
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