[access-uk] Clean install on a MAC, was: Updating a Mac

  • From: "George Bell" <george@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 09:49:09 +0100

Hi Tristram,

I'm a shade baffled here when you say it was an Upgrade.

I got a second hand MAC Mini from my son with no disks or such like.
I wanted to start with a completely clean system on it, and so not
being able to get Snow Leopard in Northampton, I toddled down to the
Milton Keynes Apple store.

There I purchased Snow Leopard OS X on DVD for £26.00 including VAT.

On return, I put the DVD into the MAC Mini when it was running
initially, but was unable at that time to figure out how to perform a
fresh install.  Over to Google.

I found out that I should re-start the MAC with the OS X DVD in the
drive and immediately after I heard the chime, how down the letter C.
When the apple appear on the screen, take my finger off the C key.

Now I was booting from the DVD.

To erase the hard drive I had to select "Utilities" from the very top
line, and then "Disk Utilities".  Here I was given four choices
ranging from "Quick Erase", up to a 35 pass read/write erase which
said it was to US Military Erase Standards.  Being completely, totally
and utterly naive to Apples, I decided to go for the full 109 yards,
and 109 yards tuned out to be!  1 Day and 1 Hour to erase a 135 GB
hard drive.

Once that was complete next day, I was able to install a completely
clean Snow Leopard in around an hour, after which (and not unlike
Windows) it went off and did a massive update which took another hour
or more.

One thing which did surprise me was that the DVD did not come with any
Code to enter.  It just installed.  Moreover, it even joined our
Windows Server 2003 network way easier than the PCs did.

My only two remaining issues are, 1) The bluetooth mini keyboard and
the mouse appear to have remembered the previous user's name, so I
will have to investigate that one in due course, and, 2) Being an
older MAC Mini, I need to go visit an approved MAC repairer to get the
memory increased from 1 GB.  It's definitely not a job for the faint
of heart.

George Bell.

-----Original Message-----
From: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Tristram Llewellyn
Sent: 20 May 2011 09:20
To: 'access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [access-uk] Re: Updating a Mac was, Apps for the Mac, was New
voices for the next apple operating system

The £30 price tag was a bit of a surprise to most long term user's and
that was only for the upgrade version and would not install on a clean
disk.  The upgrade from Panther to Leopard was nowhere as cheap
whatever way you looked at it.  The price was somewhat in recognition
that there were few visible user oriented features and Apple were
willing to massively discount against hardware.  I wouldn't
necessarily bank on Lion being quite as cheap.

Regards.

Tristram Llewellyn
Technical Support
Sight and Sound Technology
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