Setting up New Mac & Panther

[Sick Puppy]

I just switched from Windows based machines (although I still retain 2 windows machines) to Mac's, I just purchased a new G5 iMac with 1 gig ram 250 gig hard drive and 20" screen, now I know there are many different things with Panther and Mac machines, since this is my first Mac I could use a little help, the computer will be here in a couple of weeks so I am doing my study to optimize the Mac to its fullest, I know Windows and hardware inside out but how much of that knowledge can be applied to Panther and Mac, the Mac will be for general use along with Photoshop CS, I do a lot of Astro Photography and run Starry Night Pro if you are familiar with Astronomy apps, from the info I have supplied how many partitions and size should I setup on the 250 HD and should I make a separate partition for the swap file and if so how big should the swap file be, I have 1 gig ram.
1 last thing what would be the best resources bible for Panther and Macs.

 

[Blue Velvet]

David Pogue's: The Missing Manual is good for a general Panther book.

In all likelihood, the iMac will come with the OS installed, so you'll have to boot from the supplied disk and repartition the drive using Disk Utility.

I've always had a scratch partition for Photoshop on my Macs 10-20gb, seems to work OK. It may seem virtually empty most of the time, until that billion layer, CMYK, 600ppi file comes along...

Not sure about the swap file, I s'pose that's Windows virtual memory scheme. You probably don't need to worry too much about a separate partition for that -- in fact, I'm not sure OS X is set-up to do that unless you want to go hacking in Terminal...

I'll leave that info for wiser heads on this forum but personally, I wouldn't go there.

 

[Darwin]

I do a lot of Astro Photography and run Starry Night Pro if you are familiar with Astronomy apps, from the info I have supplied how many partitions and size should I setup on the 250 HD and should I make a separate partition for the swap file and if so how big should the swap file be, I have 1 gig ram.

Since Mac OS X is on Unix it can be moditfied to use a swap partition but as Velvet said it would mean going into the Terminal and since you only have 1 hard drive moving the swap files to another area isn't going to make much difference in speed, besides it isn't like Linux when most of the time you have to set a partition

I don't believe you really need more then one partition, since you don't really gain much but thats what I think

Also its easier to keep 1 drive clean and not having to worry about losing space on one partition and having one with loads of space etc