Getting ready for my MacBook Mini

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While I wait for Dell to ship my Dell Mini 9, I did the only thing I can do: pretend. Borrowing an idle Mac Mini, I installed, updated, and trimmed OS X to see how much breathing room I’ll have on the 16G SSD. I’ll put my process here for my own reference when I do it again for real but also for anyone who might come by and is curious.

  1. Formatted SSD as 16G HFS+ partition. I’m not sure what the actual size of the SSD will be (I’ve heard ~13G usable)
  2. Installed 10.5.4 with everything option turned off
  3. Did initial set-up and let Spotlight build initial search index
    7.92G Used, 8.08G Free
  4. Installed available updates:
    • Remote Desktop Client Update 3.2.2
    • QuickTime 7.6
    • iTunes 8.1
    • Java For Mac OS X 10.5 Update 2 1.0
    • Mac OS X Update Combined 10.5.6

    Reboot: 7.23G Used, 8.77G Free

  5. Installed Firefox 3.0
  6. Using AppZapper (running from a flash drive), I deleted the following apps:
    • Automator
    • Chess
    • DVD Player
    • Font Book
    • iSync
    • AirPort Utility
    • Audio MIDI Setup
    • Boot Camp Assistant
    • ColorSync Utility
    • Migration Assistant
    • ODBC Administrator
    • Podcast Capture
    • RAID Utility
    • Remote Install Mac OS X
    • VoiceOver Utility

    7.15G Used, 8.85G Free

  7. Installed available updates:
    • iLife Support
    • AirPort Client Update 2009-001 1.0
    • Front Row Update 2.1.7
    • Safari 3.2.1
    • Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 3 1.0
    • Security Update 2009-001

    Reboot: 7.6G Used, 8.4G Free

  8. Ran Monolingual and removed all languages except English and English (United States)
    Reboot: 6.09G Used, 9.91G Free
  9. Ran Monolingual and removed all Input Menu languages
    6.04G Used, 9.96G Free
  10. Using Monolingual removed all architectures other than Intel
    Reboot: 5.97G Used, 10.03 G Free

Of course, I can dig through /System and /Library to find others but I don’t think the gain would be great and I’m happy with having 8-10G free considering I can easily get a 8G SD flash card for additional storage.

A new toy for my birthday

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If you follow me on Twitter or read my previous Twitter posts, you saw that yesterday we decided that we could afford to buy a Dell Mini 9 for my birthday. I’m kinda excited as I’ve been wanting a netbook for a bit and the Dell is able to run OS X with no significant compromises (aka Hacintosh). Since I think it will be a bit before Apple decides to play in the netbook arena (if ever) and, if they do, will not be likely targeting sub-$400, this will be the best way to get a mini Mac laptop on the cheap.

Of course, the challenge of getting OS X running will be fun in-and-of-itself. Will it be the perfect laptop? No. I know the screen is small, keyboard cramped, and the processor is on the modest side, but I will be able to carry it almost anywhere and will have a full browser, mail, and programs with me. With the SSD disk, it should be silent, too, which is nice.

I’ll be ordering it tomorrow morning and while it won’t make it in time for my 40th birthday on Wednesday, it will hopefully be in before too long. I’ll let you know how it goes and what the experience is like.