Upgrading to Leopard in the future

Hi,

With every passing day I'm getting closer to finally being able to afford my MacBook (I'm massively underpaid for an IT manager ) and just want to get some advice on the performance issues related with upgrading Mac OS X.

I should be in a position to be able to afford my MacBook before Leopard is released, and although I'm in no particular rush to get one as soon as I can afford it, I would really like to get it as soon as I can.

If I decide to buy a MacBook before Leopard is released, and then also decide that Leopard warrants the cost of the upgrade (which it sounds like it will be) would there be any performance related issues of installing Leopard on top of Tiger in comparison with waiting for Leopard to be released and buying it preinstalled on the MacBook new? Have there been any performance-related issues or general problems with updating previous versions of OS X?

Does a similar situation apply for iLife once the '07 version is released, or am I just an idiot, and will everything run fine because they're Macs?

Thanks for any advice anyone can give.

Everything I've read seems to indicate that an in-place upgrade is very straightforward with no performance or reliability degradation. I don't see any "killer" features in Leopard that can't be easily grafted onto Tiger via the aftermarket, anyway. So if you want a Macbook now, I would say just go ahead and get one.

I am still hoping that Leopard's 64 bit support may turn out to be the killer feature - more speed perhaps?

Meantime, there are LOTS of great features already advertized for Leopard. You are right however, most can be grafted onto Tiger already with existing 3rd party products. For example, I can get most of the new Mail functionality with Thunderbird, most of the Spaces functionality with YouControl Desktops, most of the Time Machine functionality with lots of different backup packages and so on.

Thanks for your replies.

I too am hoping for something a bit more fundamental in Leopard; any applications that Apple provide can always be replaced or complimented by 3rd party and open source projects. Having used Windows and been poor for so long, I've pretty much gotten used to having to dig around for applications that fit the bill. They've hyped this/these killer feature(s) so much though that I presume it has to be something fairly groundbreaking. "Spaces now supports 8! desktops" would be a bit pants to be honest.

My concern with the upgrade was more just that it wouldn't go smoothly and it would be worth just sticking with Tiger. Or that I'd by a MacBook next week and Leopard would be released the week after

I totally get what you mean... everytime I reinstall Windows, I feel like a piece of the computer just died, and things seem to be as if the whole thing just came out of surgery and may fall apart any moment.

(SideNote)
It's weird. Fresh OS X is more similar to my current OS X than a fresh Windows is to my current Windows. Windows just eveolves into a monster...
(/SideNote)

I don't know WHY it happens on PCs, maybe because the OS leaves irreparable residue. But AFAIK, OS X is pretty smooth and should perform even better once you upgrade.

CD Drop

I think it's really crappy that the CD Drop version of Leopard requires you to reinstall Tiger before you want to do a clean install. Why did Apple not just include the Full Version on these computers? I bought my MBP less than a month ago, and it came with the Tiger disks (2), and the 1 Leopard Disk. I didn't have a clue that it wasn't the real deal version. What a pain to have to go backward, just to go forward!