Back in November ’05, I bought a new iBook with a 100GB drive. Overall I’ve been really happy with it. It’s a nice little machine.
I totally forgot to post this image back when I bought it. If you add the operating system + pre-installed apps + that bit of drive space that is for who knows what, my 100GB drive has about 80GB free… right out of the box. Of course that number is much, much smaller now that I have installed all my apps, and files, but I was a bit surprised at just how much was taken without installing anything. This is definitely something to keep in mind if you are buying a new system. My advice is always buy as much drive space, and RAM as you can afford… you’ll probably need it.
On a related note… if you buy a 60GB iPod, it’s really only 55GB.
I just upgraded my wife’s 12″ iBook from a 30 to a 100GB drive. iWork ’06 wasn’t even an option before we upgraded due to the large install space required.
I noticed that as well. I bought the stock 12″ iBook (1.33Ghz) back in Aug ’05. I got about half the free space out of the box, not to mention you lose some space after formatting the drive.