Okay, right off the bat, I turn the MBP on and notice that the 80GB hard drive is diminished to about ~60GB.. Now, what can I delete that I don't need to free up some space that on there? or do I need whatever is on there that takes up ~20GB? Any suggestions or advice would be helpful. Thanks everyone, appreciate it.
Simplest way is to reinstall Mac OS X using the included discs and disabling options such as installing additional languages, additional print drivers and other stuff you don't need when at the installation prompt.
There is a bunch of stuff that you could delete if you don't intend to use it.
If you look in your applications folder you will find an Office Test Drive and A trial version of iWork. If you don't intend to buy iWork delete it and definately delete the Office Test Drive. Between the two I would guess at least 400 MB.
You can also free up some space by deleting sound loops from garage band if you don't use garage band. "Library/Application Support/Garage Band" is about 2GB in size. Delete it (as in ONLY the Garage Band folder) and the garage band.app file from applications.
If you don't need iDVD you can remove its files too - 1.6GB. Again delete only the iDVD folder from "Library/Application Support" and the iDVD executable.
iLife in general takes up a ton of space so unless you use all of it, delete the features you don't use.
A lot of people suggest removing language support or printer drivers but to do this you will need to do a complete re-install (and I personally disagree with not installing the print drivers as the built in drivers have all been recompiled for use on Intel Macs).
All that being said why are you worried? You still have 60GB of space. You should be fine.
"(and I personally disagree with not installing the print drivers as the built in drivers have all been recompiled for use on Intel Macs)."
If the printer you are using or planning on getting is already Universal, there would not be an issue from downloading the same driver from the printers webpage.
"I bet you can't find the Universal driver for an HP 6800 series InkJet on the HP website. HP didn't have any Universal binaries that I could find on their website. The drivers bundled with the Intel Version of 10.4 are NOT all available on the web."
Somehow I doubt that they are Universal. Based on the release date I doubt they are Universal.
Not that it matters - it looks like ALL printing is currently running under Rosetta. For some reason lp is running as a PowerPC executable even though it is compiled Universal.
CNET: "Canon, Epson, and HP have all also announced that full universal binary drivers for their Apple peripherals will come with the iMac Core Duo as part of OS X 10.4."
Something is wrong. I am opening a new thread for this.