Importing Photos to iPhoto? Can I delete the files?

I'm importing all my pictures to iPhoto. Can I now delete the individual files off my computer? Is that recommended? My understanding is that iPhoto basically makes a copy of each photo to manage within it's own file format and database so I won't need the individuals.

A qualified yes to that. Before deleting, or importing for that matter, just make sure you've verified in iPhoto's Preferences in (I think) the Advanced tab that you've selected to copy photos into iPhoto when importing. It's phrased something like that and has a check box. If you don't then you are just copying links/pointers to the original destination of the photos and creating thumbnails in iPhoto. Were you to do this and then delete the originals, you would see the names of the photos in iPhoto and a thumbnail for each... that is until you clicked on the thumbnail. The thumbnail would then disappear and turn into a question mark "?" and display a message asking you to fix the link using Finder.

So, delete the originals only after you are sure iPhoto is importing them, and not just creating links.