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few questions from a New MacBook Pro owner

M

mgirg

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 19, 2008
106
18
hi,

I have just switched from windows and received my new 17" hi-res matte macbook pro (2.6ghz with 4gb ram) and I am delighted with it. The screen is great with no probs so far, same for airport and superdrive, and I have put firefox 3 beta5 on and am happily playing. it is silent (fingers crossed) seems to be working wee. I am still getting used to doing things differently from windows but if it is only twice as stable as my old windows laptop I will be happy, so I am cautiously optimistic about things (having read about all the problems people have been having with the new macbook pros on this forum).

Anyway I have a couple of questions:

1. I have read lots of posts on this forum advising doing a clean install of osx and removing the unused languages, but apart from saving a few gb of hard disk space (which isn’t really an issue), are there any other benefits, eg will it make my mac run faster - or conversely slow it down if I don’t do this?

2.coming from windows I am all to familiar with the way that with windows the more programs you load onto it the slower the os gets. Does this happen with macs too as there are lots of programs I want to load onto it (eg handbrake, appzapper, mtr) that I will probably only use occasionally? so if I install lots of programs will it significantly slow my mac or does it not make any difference as long as they are not running in the background?

I have searched the forums and couldn’t find the answers, so any help would be much appreciated, and I apologise if I have posted in the wrong area.

mike
 
Clean install only to save a few Gigs with extra languages and un-needed printer drivers.

As far as more speed goes - any computer will slow down when the hard drive is full as the drive has to seek more to find apps etc and also for virtual memory use.

Mac OS also has a better file system so no more disk defrags yay
When ever you install a app at the end you'l see "Optimizing" this is when it is doing auto "mini defrags" if you think of it that way

Im not being totally technical but thats what you want to hear.

Enjoy your :apple:
 
mgirg said:
hi,

I have just switched from windows and received my new 17" hi-res matte macbook pro (2.6ghz with 4gb ram) and I am delighted with it. The screen is great with no probs so far, same for airport and superdrive, and I have put firefox 3 beta5 on and am happily playing. it is silent (fingers crossed) seems to be working wee. I am still getting used to doing things differently from windows but if it is only twice as stable as my old windows laptop I will be happy, so I am cautiously optimistic about things (having read about all the problems people have been having with the new macbook pros on this forum).

Anyway I have a couple of questions:

1. I have read lots of posts on this forum advising doing a clean install of osx and removing the unused languages, but apart from saving a few gb of hard disk space (which isn’t really an issue), are there any other benefits, eg will it make my mac run faster - or conversely slow it down if I don’t do this?

2.coming from windows I am all to familiar with the way that with windows the more programs you load onto it the slower the os gets. Does this happen with macs too as there are lots of programs I want to load onto it (eg handbrake, appzapper, mtr) that I will probably only use occasionally? so if I install lots of programs will it significantly slow my mac or does it not make any difference as long as they are not running in the background?

I have searched the forums and couldn’t find the answers, so any help would be much appreciated, and I apologise if I have posted in the wrong area.

mike
Click to expand...

Question #1: I have a MBP, love it. I did not do a clean install to remove all of the language and extra printer drivers and have not noticed anything. I think it's recommended if you are worried about space, other than that it doesn't matter either way.

Question #2: I am an applications whore (to put it bluntly) I see an app that I think I would like and I download it, same with widgets (widgets are going to be the death of me :) ) I have not noticed any slowing due to my app habits. If you run all the apps at one time then ya, I'm sure you will notice something. The only issue that I have (since I am a widgets whore) is my dashboard takes up a lot of memory.

Hope this helps.

Peace :cool:
 
mgirg said:
hi,
blah blah blah

1. I have read lots of posts on this forum advising doing a clean install of osx and removing the unused languages, but apart from saving a few gb of hard disk space (which isn’t really an issue), are there any other benefits, eg will it make my mac run faster - or conversely slow it down if I don’t do this?

2.coming from windows I am all to familiar with the way that with windows the more programs you load onto it the slower the os gets. Does this happen with macs too as there are lots of programs I want to load onto it (eg handbrake, appzapper, mtr) that I will probably only use occasionally? so if I install lots of programs will it significantly slow my mac or does it not make any difference as long as they are not running in the background?

I have searched the forums not too well blah blah

mike
Click to expand...

1 it's up to you. personally i think you could just download an app like monolingual which will remove extra languages and powerpc universal apps if you want it to.

2: no, i'm pretty sure apps that arent running won't slow down your mac... or your pc...
 
I have the same configuration and have been using Macs for a long file. As far custom configuring (which I do) the real benefit is just saving disk space. If aren't worried about that there is no real reason to do this.

The mac will only (potentially) get slower if you are running a lot of programs at once and use up memory forcing it to use virtual memory. There really isn't a penalty for loading programs on the disk. Microsoft's problem is the use of DLLs which the OS loads up unnecessarily. Mac OS X works differently and this shouldn't be any issue. The one thing I would avoid is some programs that load into the system and modify OS functions. These are really not recommended. Some programs use things like APE to integrate themselves to provide system menu add-ons and such, but there are basically a hack and not recommended by Apple. These programs can cause programs, but "normal" programs are not an issue.

Finally I would recommend color calibrating your screen or using profiles posted here. You will see your gorgeous display look even better. Open System Preference -> Display, the click on the color tab. Click on the Color LCD profile and click the open profile button. Scroll to line 13 and you can see the code for your display. If it's 9C7A, it the same as mine and you can use the profiles I've made. They are at http://caslis.com/files/index_files/MBP17Profiles.zip . Unzip the directory and put the files in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles. Then in the display system preference select the one you want. I'd recommend the MBP17 Native 22 one.
 
bcaslis said:
I have the same configuration and have been using Macs for a long file. As far custom configuring (which I do) the real benefit is just saving disk space. If aren't worried about that there is no real reason to do this.

The mac will only (potentially) get slower if you are running a lot of programs at once and use up memory forcing it to use virtual memory. There really isn't a penalty for loading programs on the disk. Microsoft's problem is the use of DLLs which the OS loads up unnecessarily. Mac OS X works differently and this shouldn't be any issue. The one thing I would avoid is some programs that load into the system and modify OS functions. These are really not recommended. Some programs use things like APE to integrate themselves to provide system menu add-ons and such, but there are basically a hack and not recommended by Apple. These programs can cause programs, but "normal" programs are not an issue.

Finally I would recommend color calibrating your screen or using profiles posted here. You will see your gorgeous display look even better. Open System Preference -> Display, the click on the color tab. Click on the Color LCD profile and click the open profile button. Scroll to line 13 and you can see the code for your display. If it's 9C7A, it the same as mine and you can use the profiles I've made. They are at http://caslis.com/files/index_files/MBP17Profiles.zip . Unzip the directory and put the files in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles. Then in the display system preference select the one you want. I'd recommend the MBP17 Native 22 one.
Click to expand...

Where can I find a color profile for my 17" MBP with 9C79?
 
bcaslis said:
I have the same configuration and have been using Macs for a long file. As far custom configuring (which I do) the real benefit is just saving disk space. If aren't worried about that there is no real reason to do this.

The mac will only (potentially) get slower if you are running a lot of programs at once and use up memory forcing it to use virtual memory. There really isn't a penalty for loading programs on the disk. Microsoft's problem is the use of DLLs which the OS loads up unnecessarily. Mac OS X works differently and this shouldn't be any issue. The one thing I would avoid is some programs that load into the system and modify OS functions. These are really not recommended. Some programs use things like APE to integrate themselves to provide system menu add-ons and such, but there are basically a hack and not recommended by Apple. These programs can cause programs, but "normal" programs are not an issue.

Finally I would recommend color calibrating your screen or using profiles posted here. You will see your gorgeous display look even better. Open System Preference -> Display, the click on the color tab. Click on the Color LCD profile and click the open profile button. Scroll to line 13 and you can see the code for your display. If it's 9C7A, it the same as mine and you can use the profiles I've made. They are at http://caslis.com/files/index_files/MBP17Profiles.zip . Unzip the directory and put the files in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles. Then in the display system preference select the one you want. I'd recommend the MBP17 Native 22 one.
Click to expand...

thanks everyone for the prompt replies, and thanks bcaslis for the colour profiles, i have the same display as you so i found them very helpful.
 
sr5878 said:
1 it's up to you. personally i think you could just download an app like monolingual which will remove extra languages and powerpc universal apps if you want it to.

2: no, i'm pretty sure apps that arent running won't slow down your mac... or your pc...
Click to expand...

Actually it does serve a noticible slow down on PC. I havent noticed the same problem on Mac, I'm thinking probably because there's no stupid registry keys or BS added to your Mac when you install something. Just drag and drop baby!
 
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