How much room?

Hello, everybody!

I made this thread to say hello to everybody here at the Mac forums, and introduce myself a bit. Also to ask a question, but that'll come after introduction.
I am a programmer. I like to spend a lot of time on my computer looking through codes and games and every once in a while, watching some videos or playing some games. Right now (while I'm typing this), I use Windows 7. (Which, in my opinion, is a HUGE let-down compared to Windows XP.) As a lot of people know, any good programmer should have access to more than one Operating System, and so I recently decided I was going to install Mac OS X to go along with Windows 7. However, before I do so, I need to know how much room it takes to install Mac OS X. It would be very helpful, as I'm thinking that if it takes less than 8 GB, than I can buy a USB from the convenience store I live next to.

Thanks,
Jon

You won’t get any help here if you’re looking at building a hackintosh. The community guidelines and the American law prohibits it.

I'm not planning on hacking anything. I'm going to have my Mac installation on a laptop and I will have my laptop set up next to my Windows computer. I think I may have said it wrong before, haha... anyway, yeah. I'm going to set it up on my laptop, it's just I'm hoping that I can install it to both my laptop AND my USB.. so that I can have my USB as a backup. I WILL purchase Mac, I just want to find out as much as I can first..

Sorry for the wording!
~Jon

No problem! Re-read my post now and realized how mean I sounded, apologies!

Right now the lion upgrade from the Mac App Store is exactly 3.77GB. I’m not sure whether it’s larger in is full form, or whether the upgrade is the full fledged deal. Hope this helps.