New Mac user here, Hey Everyone!

As stated I just purchased my first Mac, I bought a 24" 2.8gig iMac with 4gig of ram. Let me say I am not technically challenged. I have been a PC user since the old DOS operating systems, but figured it was time to give OS X a shot. Anyway I hooked a 500gig USB hard drive up for the time capsule back up. It has only been hooked up for a week and it has already used 135 gigs of space. At this rate i'll have to get a new hard drive every month. I have to be doing something wrong. Some setting, something?

Time Machine will use all the space that you give it. Then it throws out the older when full for new backups. I think I have hear that it condenses the older backups as well but I'm not sure. If you want to use the drive for other things, which some may say is a bad idea, you can partition the drive as I have done. I partitioned a 500GB in half and gave one part to TM and the other for whatever. So when the drive is plugged in it is mounted and shown as 2 separate drive on the desktop.

Welcome to Mac and this forum!

Welcome to mac , and dakineyj has got the answer of you.

Thanks, I thought I was doing something wrong. I will probably be a regular for a while till I get used to the iMac, So thanks inadvance for any help.

Yes, Time Machine will automatically delete the oldest backup, but also I think it only backs up what was changed since the last time. In other words, it doesn't make a whole new copy of your system each time.