Optimizing an MBP

I have just ordered a new Core 2 Duo MBP and I have serveral concerns about optimizing the performance of the machine, as well as basic knowledge. I have looked over the Switchers Guide to OSX, so these questions are beyond the scope of that article.

- For starters, is it necessary/useful to partition the hard drive, and if so, how would I go about doing that?

- How can I free up some of the hard drive space? Ideally I would like to delete all languages except for English, Spanish, and Chinese. Will I lose some space on the hard drive if I format and start from scratch?

- I have an external 80GB hard drive, and when I plug it into a Windows system, all folders show up, but when I plug into my friends MB, I only get a fraction of the folders. Why is this? And how can I get all of them to show up? Furthermore, the Apple displays all kinds of crazy folders (which I never created) with links to various pictures and files of mine. This totally baffles me.

- What are some other useful tips in optimizing the performance of an MBP right off the bat? I will be getting this thing in a few days and I would like to tweak it so that it performs as well as possible.

Thanks!

 

Mac's don't come with a lot of bloatware and are largely self optimizing.

Take a look at: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/performance.html
Get yourself a book like: http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Tiger-..._bbs_sr_1/102-1438451-4937767?ie=UTF8&s=books

There are some utilities that will allow you to reclaim space by getting rid of the parts of apps you don't use (like the PPC part of universal apps or language extansions) but I don't know just how much space that saves.

The biggest thing you have to be aware of is how some Mac apps work by always making a copy of something when imported or changed and this can grow very quickly. Usually you can say don't import but instead use the original. iTines, iPhoto etc you should learn about to conserver disk space.

You don't need to repartition a Mac Hard drive but the Disk Utility will let you do so (Applications,Utilities,Disk Utility).

You can get rid of the little bit of bloat ware on your Mac by simply dragging the offending Applications from the application folder into the trash. Two biggies are MS Office and iWork trials. Garage Band is also very large so if you don't use it....

Not sure about you disk issue. OS X can read and write Fat (16 and 32) partitions and read NTFS partitions. If you have an external disk you want to share between Mac's and PC's you should format it as Fat32 (Windows format or Mac Disk Utility). You might want to do a ScanDisk via Windows and see if something is corrupted. If the Disk was used on XP Pro and some of the folders were Encrypted you might also see results like this. I'd suggest copying everything off on the Windows box, reformatting Fat32 and putting everything back on.

Best of luck. Long time Windows users like myself always find is a little strange and don't quite trust that there is just not much we have to do on an ongoing basis to keep a computer running well, so OS X can creep you out a bit. Just sit back and enjoy the ride ;-)

 

I think Jim was pretty spot on there. I would also suggest removing the print drivers and any extra language stuff.
Those take up a lot of space as well.