HD Space Vanishing Act

Hi,
I am a recent switcher and got a 2.0GHz MacBook for Christmas - it's da bomb and I'll never use a PC again. However, it came with a 74.5 GB hard drive (usable space - already formatted), and yet only 52.9 GB is usable! OS X ships on a DVD, so that's probably 4.7 GB gone (unless it's a DVD 9) - which leaves just over 70 GB. I haven't installed any of my own apps, only 155 5MP digital snaps and my 300 song iTunes collection encoded at 168kbps MP3. Those do not take nearly 20 GB I'm sure!
Big thanks to all who apply

Hey there, congrats on your Mac. Sounds like a lot of used up memory. I know when i got my Mac fresh out of the box, i had about 15Gb already used up since Mac OS X is a pretty big system, aside from the iLife that comes preinstalled, you get a lot of stuff out of the box that you wont need. Since you havent done much to it, you could reinstall and do a custom and install and only put in the software you plan on using. If you dont make music, dont install garage band Ithat saves you a GB or so right there), no websites, dont install iWeb, etc. If you cant omit each one in the custom install (because iLife is a whole package), maybe use software like AppDelete and remove them after the fact. Either way, you have to manually free up some space yourself by deleting what you dont need.

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