First Month with Leopard

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It's been a month since Leopard has been released. I thought of checking what has been the experience of each one you with the new OS.

Starting with me ..... It has been smooth so far. Happy to have upgraded to leopard.
 
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I initially went the upgrade path, then later decided to do a complete reload of the OS. Not due to any issues, but just to clean things up.

Everything seems pretty smooth to me. Only issues are that i don't like the transparent menus and I'm not that impressed with stacks. Also, I need to get a bigger external drive before I can take advantage of Time Machine. Everything else is all good.
 
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Date in Menu Bar

i lost several things after a conventional installation of Leopard including an application that showed date and time on desktop. Can you tell me how to show this in menu bar? Apple help does not, and I don't want to use Spotlight.
I am new to posts and old so bear with me.
 

cwa107


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I initially went the upgrade path, then later decided to do a complete reload of the OS. Not due to any issues, but just to clean things up.

Same here - although I migrated all of my apps and settings back in after the clean install. I haven't had any stability problems either way.

Everything seems pretty smooth to me. Only issues are that i don't like the transparent menus and I'm not that impressed with stacks.

I like the transparent menus. They definitely made them more opaque since the original demo, and I think it works. Where I really agree with you is on Stacks. Here are my gripes:

1. Stacks need to have a foreground icon indicating the directory category (downloads, applications, documents, etc). Easily remedied with a few readily available tweaks, but still an annoying oversight.

2. Fan view is great, but I think it should "scroll". That is, if the directory contains too many items to display in a fan, it should allow you to scroll through the entire directory using the scroll wheel / two-finger gesture or arrow keys. Just seems like a natural thing to me...

3. Grid view needs some performance tuning. On my MBP, it's jerky and there's plenty of horsepower here that it should be smooth.

4. I'd like to be able to click and hold on a stack to have it display as a menu - just like it did under Tiger. It was nice to have a sort-of Start Menu like interface when I had my Applications folder on the dock in Tiger.

Also, I need to get a bigger external drive before I can take advantage of Time Machine. Everything else is all good.

Time Machine works fine, but I wish it had an "advanced" mode. I think the intent was to make for brain-dead backups/restores, but I'd like to have an advanced mode where I can control when the backups happen, and what type of backup it does (incremental vs. full). Just a thought....

Otherwise, my only other gripe with Leopard is slow boot ups. My machine no longer performs like it did under Tiger in this regard. I would give anything for the 15 second boot-up times that I used to enjoy.... in fact, I've thought on more than one occasion of going back to Tiger until they get some more of the bugs worked out.
 
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I love Leopard. I did an Archive and Install, and have had no issues. In fact, I am finally going to upgrade my work computer to Leopard. I was waiting for Spaces for a long time, and I know it is going to help me.

It sucks to hear all of these stories of people going back to Tiger because of a few small things that are most likely to be fixed with the next Software Update or a simple Disk Repair.

Anyways... My opinion is: "I LOVE LEOPARD" :D
 
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I have no complaints or issues here. In fact I'm very satisfied. Everything is nice and snappy, though I did install 2 new uber-fast drives in a RAID stripe which likely helped a bit.

I did have an odd issue when I installed Speed Download... I set my downloads to the Desktop but then had an odd issue in that you could only see the downloaded items in the Desktop folder but not ON the Desktop. It also occurred if Safari did the download, but only while SD was installed. Reported it to Yazsoft... they insisted it must be some problem with Leopard... I called BS on that because I had no issues before installing SD or after uninstalling it. I laughed my butt off the other day when they released an update that specifically addressed this issue. LOL!
 
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So far I can't complain. Leopard runs very smooth on my iMac. I really like it...
 

dtravis7


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Bought the Family Pack. Did an Upgrade on Intel Mac Mini 1.66Ghz and iMac G5 iSight. Did an Archive and Install on iBook G4, Mac Mini 1.5Ghz and PowerMac G4 Digital Audio with 1.8Ghz Upgrade CPU. All ran fine first time and have continued to run great. No real issues at all except small cosmetic things and most were fixed in 10.5.1. Love the new look of Leopard. Glad I bought it.
 
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I love everything about Leopard except for some things in front row. Transparent menu bars, stacks, 3D dock. It all seems perfect to me.

About front row, one big complaint is the music stopping while invoking front row as well as while exiting the music menu. Apart from that it seems like a truly worthy upgrade..
 
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I upgraded my MacBook to Leopard just a few weeks ago, and it runs fine. I did notice a small lag while booting as compare to Tiger, but it doesn't bother me much, the laptop usually is in sleep mode at night, and I just open the lid to wake it, takes 2 seconds.

The only problems I had was with iPhoto and very slow performance when the library was on a Samba shared drive, however the updated to iPhoto and 10.5.1 did the trick. I installed them both at the same time, booted up, and iPhoto was back to normal. Got to love Leopard for the new features....

Cheers

Ben
 

Del


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Installation
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Wouldn't let me do an archive and install so had to go down the clean install route (which was simple) but lost some data/software (nothing i couldnt eventually recover).

Pros
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The whole OS seems much quicker/more responsive.
Spotlight is sooooooo much faster.
Finder is much improved.

Cons
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WIFI performance in Leopard seems a lot less stable, but has improved a bit since the first update.
The Dock is horrible compared to Tiger.
Folder Icons are horrible compared to Tiger.
 
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At first I really didn't like it but the more I use it the more it grows on me.

The fan on my once silent MCP 17" now makes a constant hum but actually it runs cooler so maybe they did that deliberately.

Generally some things run jerkier and some smoother. The dock is slightly jerky but in general I swear windows are render fractionally faster.

Spaces I don't use; I have loads of apps open but it doesn't feel as nice to someone who's used to Linux virtual desktops (I like the Compiz Fusion approach better). I dislike the way the background turns plain blue.

The dock is neat.

I wasn't keen on stacks at first but now I have my Safari Downloads folder on the dock and it's so useful.

I love the new Mail. It feels faster and is a joy to use. I like the bottom left progress bar and I'm so pleased they added notes and to do.

The new menus are a real grower; I love those too.

Not used Time Machine, don't need it.

Coverflow looks nice but is a bit slow to buffer the images and really the column flow will always be better IMO.

The new folder icons are truly awful compared to the old ones.

You now have a normal hosts file like other OSs. i think they ditched NetManager.

Safari new on-page search is excellent, more like Firefox. I was hoping they'd do that. Plus the 'Inspect Element' option is great for developers.

iStat Nano widget is bust.

Leopard changed my machine to Macintosh.local so I had to change my synergy settings.

It broke Samba.

Generally all the programs I use are great. A couple of crashes but nothing to write home about.

Boot time is a few seconds longer.
 
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Erase and Install over here. Leopard was great the past month. I really like spaces. Am I the only one really like the transparent Menu Bar. Actually, I wish if we had he option to control with the transparency. other than this dilemma, everything is great.
 
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My new machine came loaded with Tiger, but I instantly just upgraded it to Leopard. Being my first Mac, it has been extremely smooth - of course it would have been quite a headache without the bootcamp/fusion option since I have windows only software.
 
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Did the upgrade, no issues here at all. I did remove some old PPC apps due to not wanting to use them. Microsoft Office was the first to go. iWork is a great option to use instead.
 

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