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TimothyJay · Mar 25, 2005, 01:40 AM

Hey everyone.

I just got my first notebook/Mac today with my purchase of the 12" iBook G4. I love it, especially its look and stability running my graphic design programs.

The only concern I have is the immense amount of hard drive space taken up by what could only be explained by the preloaded softwares. I didn't check the space available as soon as it was taken out of the box, but after installing my Adobe Creative Suite (which could only take up about 1.2gb at the most), I notice my available space on my iBook is now down to 16.7gb.

Is that about right?

It's not too much of a big deal for me, since most of the files I will be using with/for my iBook will be saved on my external hard drive or my iPod for school works. But I'm just a little curious.

sminch · Mar 25, 2005, 03:07 AM

yeah, that would be about right. i deleted all the apps that i'd never use and installed a few small new ones and i'm at 20gb (of 27) available now. there is a lot of preloaded junk on there - crappy games, language support for some very random languages you'll never use, appleworks...

sminch

Hi I'm Ben · Mar 25, 2005, 10:08 AM

The garageband files take up a lot of room. And the langauge ones... and some other nonsense. You can free up 4-5 gigs easy. Use OmniDiskSweeper.

brettcamp · Mar 25, 2005, 11:18 AM

Delocalizer will sweep those unused language files away. Also you can delete unused printer drivers. Should save quite a few MBs.

Kyros · Apr 4, 2005, 11:05 PM

Originally posted by sminch:
yeah, that would be about right. i deleted all the apps that i'd never use and installed a few small new ones and i'm at 20gb (of 27) available now. there is a lot of preloaded junk on there - crappy games, language support for some very random languages you'll never use, appleworks...

sminch

Hey I still use Appleworks. I don't know what people have against it, it certainly beats MS Works for me.

Ah well, to each his own I guess. I 'll probably get Pages over the summer though. With luck it will have hit 2.0 by then.

TimothyJay · Apr 4, 2005, 11:15 PM

I brought my hard drive space up to 22gb by deleting practically everthing on there. I believe the only program I kept were iChat and iPhoto. After installing all the necessary softwares I need (like Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Word, and Norton AntiVirus), I was left with about 22gb left to spare =]

Also, I was wondering... if ever I do need to reinstall the softwares I deleted, they could be found in the included setup discs, correct?

sminch · Apr 5, 2005, 12:20 AM

my only issue with appleworks was the way the cursor was often in the wrong place - it did the trick as a word processor but for some reason that one thing bugged the jebesus out of me!

i deleted iphoto from my hd and then thought i might want to reinstall it, but bugger me if it's on the disks that came with my ibook, cos i can't find it at all. i can find all the other stuff (garageband, the shoddy games etc) but there is no sign of iphoto. so in answer to timothyjay's question, some of it is on the disks, and some doesn't appear to be (on mine at least). this is on a january 05 purchased ibook, btw, so ymmv.

22gb free sounds about right - i just realised the other day that i'm at 19gb free but have 3gb of music...

sminch

macaddict0001 · Apr 5, 2005, 04:20 PM

all of it is on the disc if you reinstall but if you just want to add them then it can be difficult.

mitchell_pgh · Apr 5, 2005, 05:53 PM

Originally posted by Kyros:
Hey I still use Appleworks. I don't know what people have against it, it certainly beats MS Works for me. Ah well, to each his own I guess. I 'll probably get Pages over the summer though. With luck it will have hit 2.0 by then.

So did I... up until 1999... then I woke up to the wonderful world of MS Office. It's just so compatible with the dark side.

I probably would have stuck it out with AppleWorks if Apple hadn't all but abandoned it.

I once had a crazy idea that they should open source it.

sminch · Apr 5, 2005, 07:32 PM

i might just mention neooffice/j (again) - a rather excellent open source office suit which, in my experience, has been almost flawlessly compatible with ms office, and kicks appleworks' momo. well worth the download, imho.

i'd probably rather run office as it is rather pretty and would avoid any minor campatiblity issues, but i am very cheap...

i second the vote do delocalizer, too, and suggest whatsize to see which of your folders are big (it ranks them in order of size) so you can easily delete the bloaters, such as the drivers for printers you don't have.

sminch

discotronic · Apr 5, 2005, 07:42 PM

Every new Mac I purchased gets reinstalled as soon as I get it. That way I don't install all the language packages, printer drivers and other unwanted software. You can really trim down the amount of space taken up on your hard drive.

Also, doing this will avoid problems from a bad install of the OSX image from the factory. The one time I didn't do a clean install the image turned out to be bad. After about 6 hours of updating and loading all the applications that I wanted it did a crash and wouldn't boot.

Abit667 · Apr 6, 2005, 08:18 AM

Yeah first thing I did when I got my iBook was pop in the osx dvd and reinstall just osx without all the language crap and printer drivers. You can install bits of the other stuff back if you want through software restore, or just installing it from the dmgs on the 2nd software dvd.

Randman · Apr 6, 2005, 08:30 AM

One, you don't need virus protection. Second, you should delete all Norton products. Norton doesn't play well with OSX which is why the company killed support for some of its products.

Most of the people hit the highlights, language packs, printer backs. GarageBand and iDVD take up an awful lot of room. If not needed, trash your Classic envirornment.

Still, you could always invest in an external HD or keep stuff on an iPod.