Replies to post #74316 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[bluzboy]

Eamon - re: Leopard purchase timing -

My recommendation would be to purchase(and enjoy) Leopard now, without trepidation. I predict that you'll find very few broken links(driver problems, etc.) with an immediate transition, and gain a significant amount of very real functionality and enjoyment improvement. One caveat would be that if you were a professional musician it would be prudent to wait for driver updates for audio interfaces before making the transition, as they do sometimes lag slightly in that particular arena.

John

[KCMW]

Leo timing...

similar to bluzboy answer, it kind of depends on just how 'mission critical' your needs are. In general, I'd say Apple has a pretty good track record on these upgrades, but hey, OSs are complex beasts, so there are no guarantees.

A couple approaches:

A) Jump in, have at it, you'll probably have fun, but no guarantees.

B) Wait a while, watch the Mac sites for problems (they will detail everything), see if any of those issues are concerns for you. Here's a place to start - don't be scared off, they tend to list almost any problem that anyone reports - some may be very limited problems >> http://macfixit.com/

C) Either way, you could install it on a separate partition. Boot the new OS, try it out. Any problems just boot back to the old install. Easy, probably a good thing to do for any major changes.

At any rate, the updates come out pretty regularly, so they take care of stuff as it gets fixed, you don't necesaruly need to wait for an full 'dot one' upgrade.

One of the posters here (WLD) warned that Leo could be buggier than previously releases. Apple did take on a lot of under the hood changes as I understand it. I assume WLDs statement comes from a source that is working with a developer's copy, so there may well be something to it.

I'm going to be watching and waiting, I might want to just do a HW upgrade to get Leo and the latest iLife, along with the new HW. As long as my second system (old iMac G3) keeps humming along, it's tougher for me to justify an upgrade. If that died, I'd hand the iMAc G5 down to my daughter - I know she would like that.

-KCMW

[clearsailing]

As others have noted caution, I would too. The upgrades are usually pretty stable but (no offense) as a newbie to the Mac I would watch the boards and see how others do with the bleeding edge of technology.

I would however buy a copy from Amazon now and save the $20 and get it without any shipping costs (just specify the longest delivery time) and perhaps when it gets in you can determine whether there have been any problems that you should worry about.

I ordered it from Amazon and when it comes in I will load it up on one of our three Macs and check it out.

My experience is that upgrading the Mac OS is much simpler and worry free than upgrading Windows. So, when you do upgrade, follow the instructions closely (they are simple) but my experience is that some former Windows users make it complicated and do things that goof up the process (no offense - I just have had some experiences where I would ask folks who have called me in a panic - why did you do that? and the answer is always is that is what we do on the windows side. Dont ask what ... I don't remember)

buy it now, save some $, get it perhaps in a week and then wait a week.

good luck (oh, yeah, welcome)