going to buy new ibook, is 20G enough?

[GeorgeC97]

hey everyone -

i was thinking about buying the ibook from APple.com, but it comes w/ no bundles and there is tax ! which is a killer, especially if I get teh nikon coolpix camera to go with it.

the only reason i am considering from Apple.com is b/c i can configure the ibook to have a bigger hard drive, probably 30 G or 40G, kinda just in case.

but it seems like everyone usually buys it from some other online vendor.. and you have the 20G hard drive. is it enought? basically Office and then I want to use it for iTunes and iPhoto... (not sure how many pictures or songs tho!???)

also, if i ever want to get a bigger hard drive in the future, how would i do it? would i have to carry around an external harddrive everywhere?

thanks

George

 

[AlphaTech]

Since you asked...

Can you justify the expense of increasing the hard drive right away?? If you have the spare scratch, then go for it. Personally, I would say that you should see how far the 20GB internal takes you and get external drives as you need. Don't forget, you can get a cd burner with that iBook. Burners are wonderful items since you can slide about 700MB onto each cd, which can make for easy backups.

With an external hard drive, I suggest getting one of the slim drives since they are small, and come in sizes up to 60GB, you can either bring it with you or leave it at home. I have a 30GB drive from VST/SmartDisk, one of the thin/titanium ones that is rather nice for sliding items to. I will be putting my spare 60GB drive into an enclosure soon (a 2.5" drive). Unless I decide to put it into my TiBook, in which case I will put the 40GB that came in my TiBook as an external.

That is one thing to consider, if you change the internal drive later, it can be more hassle then you want to endure to set everything back up again.


Bottom line... get the iBook with the larger drive if you see filling the 20GB drive in less then 3 to 6 months, otherwise get teh stock model. DO get the one with the combo drive so that you have a burner inside. If you find you really need additional hard drive space later, get it then. Some constant things about hard drives... they will always be getting larger, and cheaper.

 

[mac15]

get atleast 30gig
You will soon find yourself filling that pretty quick...what with the songs and the photo's
and I think you can change the HD in the ibooks but I don't know how
if that helps

 

[AlphaTech]

It appears that Apple does not list hard drives as one of the user installable parts for iBooks. If you must get the storage inside, and can afford the extra expense at the time you buy the iBook, then do it. Otherwise, just get additional hard drives later, OR burn cd's to store files. Either will be easy to use, and probably cheaper in the long run.

 

[Hemingray]

Yes, I would go for a bigger drive than the 20 gig, personally. I have a 20 gig on my G4 and it's almost full! I've got lots of movie clips, mp3 music, and iPhoto pics. Plus, if you use Photoshop for any hi-res stuff, you'll quickly find your space disappearing from that, too.

(I'm too cheap to go buy another internal drive, I'll just wait for that G5 to come along... )

 

[macktheknife]

20GB Ain't Enough, Trust Me . . .

I have a TiBook with a 30GB HD that I bought online at the Apple store. As someone who basically uses Office, iTunes, and iPhotos (no movies using Final Cut Pro or anything like that), I can tell you straight up that 20GB will not be enough if you plan to put your music collection on your iBook. OS X alone takes up 2.5GB (around this much--can someone double-check?) and about 3/4 of my music collection already hogs almost 9GB. With all the other programs and junk I have on my computer, I am already using 15GB on my HD.

You will have to pay taxes almost anywhere you buy your computer from (except maybe Amazon.com, but I'm not sure), so if you can get it configured, do it. The extra $50 for an extra 10GB of HD space is well worth the money if you ask me.

Also remember that Apple is offering a free 5GB portable HD if you buy a PowerMac G4 or TiBook before June 30th. Check it out at:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...p4GSNwfp/0.3.0.3.30.77.0.FireFlyPromo.0.0.5.0

 

[King Cobra]

macktheknife, I am pretty sure that OS X requires at least 1.5GB of Hard Disk space. For OS X Server you need at least 4GB.

As for how much Hard Disk space you may need, if you plan to use it as your main computer and/or for use with lots of graphics/music, get something bigger than 20GB.

As for getting a Combo Drive model with a CD-RW, note that the speeds of the CD-RW are 8x8x24 (what happened to convienent stand alone CD-RW?). I am posting this just in case you may plan to write to a CD-RW and apply 700MB of data. It may take 10 minutes.
__________________

Fear the King.

 

[Backtothemac]

Here is a way to look at it. On my iBook with a 20 Gig Hard Drive I have....

OS 9.2.2
OS 10.1.4
OS 10.2 WWDC Preview

Office 2001
Office v.X

Virtual PC with
Win 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT, XP, 2000 server, and 2000 Advance server.
Each of the 9x series has Office 2000, and the NT kernal machines have XP.

I have MSN Messenger, all standard Apple software, and about 300 mp3's and 300 photos.

I have 10 gigs left.

If that is not enough, go for the bigger drive. The best way to look at it is this. Go for the biggest drive that you can afford. It will be cheaper to get it now rather than later. I personally would go for the 40.

 

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by King Cobra
macktheknife, I am pretty sure that OS X requires at least 1.5GB of Hard Disk space. For OS X Server you need at least 4GB.

As for how much Hard Disk space you may need, if you plan to use it as your main computer and/or for use with lots of graphics/music, get something bigger than 20GB.

As for getting a Combo Drive model with a CD-RW, note that the speeds of the CD-RW are 8x8x24 (what happened to convienent stand alone CD-RW?). I am posting this just in case you may plan to write to a CD-RW and apply 700MB of data. It may take 10 minutes.

I did an install of OS X (minus the language packs that I don't need... such as Japanese...) and it took up about 500MB +/-. IF you install ALL of OS X (all the different languages) it might need that much space, although I think that they are also listing how much you need for it's memory management system.

10 minutes to burn is not that long, compared to what we had for speeds just a couple of years ago. Granted, I do have a 24x burner, that spits out a 700MB cd in just over 3 minutes (under 3-1/4 to 3-1/2). Both drives have the buffer underrun protection (used by Toast to make better burns). I really would suggest getting Toast to do your burns, since you can avoid the verification process and decrease the burn time. My verification method is to put the cd into a reading drive and make sure it works. That has let me know every time if the burn is good or not.

 

[macktheknife]

My bad . . .

Yeah, I guess OS X would take up a hefty chunk of space if you installed other langauges (simplified and traditional Chinese and Japanese) like I did. I think that the removal of OS 9 from your HD might save some more space, although I don't know how much. In any case, I still recommend a bigger HD if you can afford it, but remember that HD space is a function of what you plan to doing with it.

 

[King Cobra]

AlphaTech, I meant that it takes 1.5GB to install OS X. But I still think that 0.5 or 0.7GB is quite a bit of Hard Disk space to install just an OS.

And I do agree on getting Toast. Toast, in my opinion, is probably the best prominent CD burning software out there. I usually do not use the verification process with Toast, since most of by burns work well in other CD players.
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Fear the King.

 

[Falleron]

On my tower (80Gb) I have only used about 11Gb!! I use itunes lots + do all my work on it. I have OS9 and OSX on the system as well.

Go to http://www.macnn.com/news.php?id=14357

Apple seems to be doing a deal on external firewire drives.

There is also an offer on the ipod as well.