[JMZ]

Hi everyone,
I've been reading the forums for a while now, but I just now registered because I finally pulled the trigger on a new 14'' ibook and I have a bunch of questions. I posted this in the ibook forum first, but now I'm thinking it belongs here. My apologies if the repost is a breach of forum etiquette, but here goes:

I remember back when Tiger first came out and people were upgrading, they'd do an erase and install, then custom install Tiger (or something along those lines) to get the leanest possible version of the OS, minus a bunch of stuff like printer drivers and languages. Now, my computer comes with Tiger already, I'm sure, but I'm wondering if it makes any sense to erase and reinstall it, minus all the stuff I don't need.

I got the 80 gb hard drive, so I'm not even sure that the few extra gigs make a difference, but if I was going to do it, I'd do it when the computer was new, so I thought I'd check now before it gets here.

Thanks for all the informative posts, and I hope this question makes some sense.

[Randman]

If you search, you can find ways to safely delete things like unneeded printer packs and language modules to save a little room.

[JKT]

I suspect that only you can really answer that question. However, it could be a good way to introduce yourself to the Mac way of installing new Mac OS X 10.x updates. I would be tempted to do it myself, if I knew I wasn't going to need the additional languages/printer drivers/etc... one of the laws of computing - no matter how large your hard drive, you will inevitably fill it at some point!

[Toyin]

Originally Posted by JMZ

Hi everyone,
I've been reading the forums for a while now, but I just now registered because I finally pulled the trigger on a new 14'' ibook and I have a bunch of questions. I posted this in the ibook forum first, but now I'm thinking it belongs here. My apologies if the repost is a breach of forum etiquette, but here goes:

I remember back when Tiger first came out and people were upgrading, they'd do an erase and install, then custom install Tiger (or something along those lines) to get the leanest possible version of the OS, minus a bunch of stuff like printer drivers and languages. Now, my computer comes with Tiger already, I'm sure, but I'm wondering if it makes any sense to erase and reinstall it, minus all the stuff I don't need.

I got the 80 gb hard drive, so I'm not even sure that the few extra gigs make a difference, but if I was going to do it, I'd do it when the computer was new, so I thought I'd check now before it gets here.

Thanks for all the informative posts, and I hope this question makes some sense.

Don't delete all the 'useless' print drivers, especially as a laptop user. There have been several times when I was in house/office where I just hooked up my laptop and printed to a new printer (definitely adds the whoo factor when someone's having trouble with their printer). Languages you can definitely pear down and you can also choose to install X11 and developer tools.