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MBP 320 Capacity from new?

P

Peter Franks

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 9, 2011
2,122
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What is the actual capacity, I know I should have looked when bought few weeks ago, but is it usual for the the 319.73 capacity to be at 298 when all I've added so far is 1GB of the Office for Mac trial so far? 20 odd gig is just the software already on here. Sounds a lot but I'm not familiar with Mac so...?

Also, under 'Devices' below 'Macintosh HD', what is 'iDisk'? When I click on it is asks me to set up a Mobile Me account which I don't have, so no idea what it is. What is iDisk, Assume the Mac HD is the whole drive.

Thanks
 
Peter Franks said:
What is the actual capacity, I know I should have looked when bought few weeks ago, but is it usual for the the 319.73 capacity to be at 298 when all I've added so far is 1GB of the Office for Mac trial so far? 20 odd gig is just the software already on here. Sounds a lot but I'm not familiar with Mac so...?

Also, under 'Devices' below 'Macintosh HD', what is 'iDisk'? When I click on it is asks me to set up a Mobile Me account which I don't have, so no idea what it is. What is iDisk, Assume the Mac HD is the whole drive.

Thanks
Click to expand...
Snow Leopard in itself needs what, 6-7 Gb, add iLife and you're up to right around 9-10Gb worth of stuff.

Office takes up quite a bit of space roughly 1.5Gb.

So let's see, we're now already down from 320 to 308.5 or so.

Then there's the GUID partition table which takes up a fixed amount of space, I believe this is rather minimal, something along the lines of 250MB.

Others may chime in as to what else could be taking up space, but that's all I can think of at the moment.
 
My 500GB started out with 483GB free, so that sounds about right. The OS and iLife etc, will take up almost 20 gigs. If you're worried about space you should return and pay the extra $50 online to get 500 gigs rather than 320.
 
Thanks, just seems a lot. My old Windows laptop had a lot more on it but didn't use that much up for Office/Photoshop etc, that I had on it
 
Virgo said:
My 500GB started out with 483GB free, so that sounds about right. The OS and iLife etc, will take up almost 20 gigs. If you're worried about space you should return and pay the extra $50 online to get 500 gigs rather than 320.
Click to expand...

The 500G was another £300 in UK, because it was also the i7 and I bought the i5 at £999....
 
Thanks, I was unaware of that! Probably bit late now though? Can't be added after presumably, easily, anyway
 
Is there a lot fo benefit in going for SSD as opposed to the standard? Would it be something I'd want/need in the future?
 
Peter Franks said:
What is the actual capacity, I know I should have looked when bought few weeks ago, but is it usual for the the 319.73 capacity to be at 298 when all I've added so far is 1GB of the Office for Mac trial so far? 20 odd gig is just the software already on here. Sounds a lot but I'm not familiar with Mac so...?

Also, under 'Devices' below 'Macintosh HD', what is 'iDisk'? When I click on it is asks me to set up a Mobile Me account which I don't have, so no idea what it is. What is iDisk, Assume the Mac HD is the whole drive.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Usable capacity is generally .931 x the indicated drive size. Meaning that your 320Gb would rate down to a usable 297Gb. It has to do with the way bytes are defined versus advertised disc sizes:

"This numbering convention, where prefixes like mega- and giga- denote powers of 1000, is also used for data transmission rates and DVD capacities. However, the convention is different from that used by manufacturers of memory (RAM, ROM) and CDs, where prefixes like kilo- and mega- mean powers of 1024."

This link isn't the most definitive, but you get the idea from a brief read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive


On SSD drives, I wouldn't do it on a laptop. That's just me, but I believe SSDs aren't the best for a read/write intensive environment. If you were booting off of a SSD, and had your data, photos, on a second disc, that's fine (which is common for MP desktops). I'd err on the conservative side with a laptop.
 
Thanks guys, yeh will do. All I know about SSD so far is their supposed to be quieter, and kick them about a bit and the HD won't be bothered? :eek:

With the capacity, makes sense. Just wish I'd been a bit luckier with the battery capacity. It's not good. One of the reasons I'd bought the MBP was because of the battery life, but reading through these forums I'd say the older models had a much better battery life than these 2011 models. Also leaks when off at night. If it's on 100/90s, the morning shows less. Basic Word/Safari/Mail is losing 30% in maybe half hour, from 100 to 70%. Goes down within a minute a few percent. Do they wear in better after a while?
 
Peter Franks said:
Thanks guys, yeh will do. All I know about SSD so far is their supposed to be quieter, and kick them about a bit and the HD won't be bothered? :eek:

With the capacity, makes sense. Just wish I'd been a bit luckier with the battery capacity. It's not good. One of the reasons I'd bought the MBP was because of the battery life, but reading through these forums I'd say the older models had a much better battery life than these 2011 models. Also leaks when off at night. If it's on 100/90s, the morning shows less. Basic Word/Safari/Mail is losing 30% in maybe half hour, from 100 to 70%. Goes down within a minute a few percent. Do they wear in better after a while?
Click to expand...

SSD's are much, much, much faster than a traditionnal spinning platter hard drive. They are less prone to failure due to shock because there are no moving parts in them.

Are they worth it? If all you care about is speed, I guess they are, but for the amount a decently sized one goes for, I'll wait until the technology becomes more mature and cheaper before stepping up to the plate.
 
MCHR said:
Usable capacity is generally .931 x the indicated drive size. Meaning that your 320Gb would rate down to a usable 297Gb. It has to do with the way bytes are defined versus advertised disc sizes:
Click to expand...

This is correct, but necessarily doesn't apply to Snow Leopard, as when it came out, it changed the reporting to more mirror the way that manufacturers were reporting their hardware disk sizes. This change prompted all sorts of reports that SL gave back so much more free space than existed before, but in reality it was the change in reporting (many that performed an in place upgrade were touting the benefits of SL in that it gave them back tons of space, over what Leopard was using, this reporting along with the fact that the PPC support was removed).
 
Think I'll stick with it yeh, the SSD probably isn't something that I need to worry about yet, but if you guys were going to only get 3 odd hours out of a MBP, would you take it back and get another one? Or just get used to it?
 
Peter Franks said:
Think I'll stick with it yeh, the SSD probably isn't something that I need to worry about yet, but if you guys were going to only get 3 odd hours out of a MBP, would you take it back and get another one? Or just get used to it?
Click to expand...

If by that you mean battery life, it depends. So many factors affect battery life that it isn't even funny.

Apple does test their machines, and they are capable of reaching the advertised battery lives, under very specific circumstances:

-Screen at half brightness
-airport on
-bluetooth off
-time machine off
-no external peripherals connected(that includes mice and keyboards, USB thumb drives, etc).
-Having an open document in pages/word
-Browsing the web on websites that contain no flash content, refreshing every 30 seconds.

So the possibility of you actually reaching the advertised 7 hours during "normal" usage is slim to none. If you do light web browsing with minimal flash, you could expect roughly 5 hours out of the battery, anything heavier will dramatically impact your battery life.
 
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