Questions on file organization on my new mac

Hi,
I recently switched to mac(book). I have few questions on how to arrange my files on my mac. Please note that I need to use windows quite significantly for my work. I intend to install it through parallels.
1. Most of the normal Mac problems seem to do with permissions, preferences, cache and some 3rd party apps. I was wondering if working mostly on a standard account will result in all these problems afflicting only my standard account and not the administrator account. On my old PC, I used my administrator login only when installing new softwares. Most my work was through a standard user account. Should I follow the same strategy with my new mac. Please provide your comments.
2. My hard drive capacity is 60 GB. The OS alone is occupying 25 GB. In the remaining free space I need to install windows for which I will need 15 - 20 GB. I am left with around 15 GB for my mac files. This is not sufficient. Is there a way I can reduce the space that mac os occupies?
3. A friend of mine who is a long time mac user told me that he partitions his hard drive. One for the OS and the other for documents. I will use windows (thro parallels) on my mac. I am afraid this partitioning idea may make things complicated for me. Is there any merit in following this partition strategy?
Thank you.
Regards,
Murali

Hi muralis;
Let me start with your last question first on partitioning your drive. Today that is generally consider a bad solution. If you are interested in all of the details I can give them to you later. For now since you admit that you think you are going to come up short for disk space and I agree, I would strongly suggest you do compound this with partitioning.
Now on to making OS X smaller, there is an application called Monolingual that will remove other languages from your system this can save about a GB of space. If you have installed GarageBand it has a bunch of sample tracks that burn up bookoo disk space if you aren't going to use that delete them. Also in /library/printers there are folders for a bunch of printers. If there are any printer you will never own, delete the files for them. That can save several 100 MB of space.
Finally do you really need so much space for Windows? With such a small drive I would consider give Windows less space like 10 or 15 GB instead of 15 to 20 GB. To me it sounds like you are being overly generous with Windows.
Allan

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