New Mac Mini - Should I do clean monolingual install?

[craig1410]

Hi Guys,

I've just bought a Mac Mini 2.26G/2G/160G/9400M for my Dad as his first Mac. I've set it up and all appears to be running well.

Since it only has a 160GB hard disk, do you think it is worth the trouble to reinstall Snow Leopard from the restore disks in single language configuration. I've done this before on my iMac for Leopard and I know it saves a bit of disk space but that was using the Leopard retail DVD and I'm not sure if you can do this with the grey restore disks or if they just recover to the same state as the machine was when I first powered it up.

At present the Mac Mini is reporting 159.7GB capacity, 10.78GB used and 148.92GB remaining. What would I save if I went monolingual? 5GB?

Comments/advice most welcome.

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[California]

Hi Guys,

I've just bought a Mac Mini 2.26G/2G/160G/9400M for my Dad as his first Mac. I've set it up and all appears to be running well.

Since it only has a 160GB hard disk, do you think it is worth the trouble to reinstall Snow Leopard from the restore disks in single language configuration. I've done this before on my iMac for Leopard and I know it saves a bit of disk space but that was using the Leopard retail DVD and I'm not sure if you can do this with the grey restore disks or if they just recover to the same state as the machine was when I first powered it up.

At present the Mac Mini is reporting 159.7GB capacity, 10.78GB used and 148.92GB remaining. What would I save if I went monolingual? 5GB?

Comments/advice most welcome.

Thanks,
Craig.

Drop a 320gb hard drive in there at least. I put a 500gb and upped the ram too. Very fast

 

[craig1410]

Drop a 320gb hard drive in there at least. I put a 500gb and upped the ram too. Very fast

Maybe some day but for now 160GB internal and 1TB USB external will have to do. My Dad's uses are pretty light so 2GB of RAM is plenty and 160G+1TB is also plenty for him. To put this in perspective, he is coming from a 1.47GHz Athlon XP machine from about 6 years ago running Windows 2000... I'm sure he will like his new Mac Mini...

Any thoughts on leaving the Mini as is or doing a fresh install?

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Kate.]

There are applications like Monolingual that will allow you to delete the unwanted language files without having to do a clean install.

 

[craig1410]

There are applications like Monolingual that will allow you to delete the unwanted language files without having to do a clean install.

Hi Kate,

Yes I've used monolingual before and spookily enough I am running it just now on the freshly setup Mac Mini just to see if it does the trick. I've only used it once before on an old iBook G4 so I'm not fully confident in it yet which is why I wondered if the fresh install approach was better.

Do you know if Monolingual achieves the same end result as a clean install with English language only selected? Also, do you know of any issues with monolingual? I'm keen for my Dad not to experience any weird issues as the Mac will be very new to him and I want him to enjoy the experience.

Thanks for your time,
Craig.

 

[craig1410]

Monolingual has just finished and has reduced disk usage as follows:

Capacity: 159.7GB
Available: 150.11GB
Used: 9.59GB

So, only 1.2GB saved. I had hoped for more to be honest.

I know that Snow Leopard is a bit better at conserving disk space than Leopard so I think on balance, unless anyone disagrees, I am probably better just leaving the machine as it is and not doing a fresh install.

Anyone disagree?

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[ntrigue]

Sorry I was late to the party but 1.2GB is excellent on Snow Leopard.

 

[bebenut123]

I've just used Monolingual, at the end I got a message telling me that it freed up 3.5 GB.
However I had the info window opened for my 'home' and the size went up, not down, from 29GB, to 29.04GB.

Does not make sense to me...