? about upgrading from Tiger to Leopard

Hi all,

I am getting my mother to switch from Windows to mac (yeah) and she lives a few hundred miles from me and I want to be able to answer all of her questions when she has a problem so I was going to upgrade my tiger to leopard so we would both be running the same thing. My question is this, after I upgrade will I have to do anything to all my programs to get them working again? I was looking at doing the upgrade, not a clean install. I only want to do the clean install if I run into problems with the upgrade. I was just worried that I would be made to jump through a bunch of hoops to get thing like my PS.cs or Final Draft working again if I do the upgrade. In my perfect world I would just be able to do the upgrade and all my programs would never know the difference. Any info on this would be great guys. I plan on heading over to her home early next week so any advice before then would be great. Thanks.

From what I've heard, just upgrading will cause problems and sometimes lead to doing a clean install. I would backup any files and programs you wish to keep first. You could try the Archive and Install, before doing a clean Install.
But be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.

If you don't have access to an external hard drive for backup purposes, I would recommend doing an Archive & Install. Using this option preserves your OS and all programs, settings and data while still doing a clean install.

cwa107 said:

If you don't have access to an external hard drive for backup purposes, I would recommend doing an Archive & Install. Using this option preserves your OS and all programs, settings and data while still doing a clean install.

Click to expand...

Having had to install Leopard twice, after the 10.5.2. upgrade went wrong, I decided to do a clean install on an external hard drive. I am running Leopard from there until I am happy with it, and keeping Tiger on my macbook's internal hard drive.

Archive and Install is the way to go, IMO. It really does minimize a lot of issues with application integration that are already loaded on your machine.

WolfsBane said:

Archive and Install is the way to go, IMO. It really does minimize a lot of issues with application integration that are already loaded on your machine.

Click to expand...

So how exactly does this work. Does it leave my programs completely alone so I don't have to put the discs in and reinstall and activate the programs.

After the Archive ans install will the programs be right where they should be or will they be in a back up folder, if in a back up folder what do I do, just drag them back to applications and they will work?

Sorry guys, I am a somewhat recent switcher myself and this will be my first mac O.S. upgrade.

Thanks

Upgrade is not as bad as it has been said. I've seen so many macs being upgraded and no problems. Maybe a few more problems than a clean install, but for a lot of people the upgrade path just works.

Make sure you haven't installed unsanity's App Enhancer though. Cause that's a definite BSOD.

Some info for you.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301270

If you do upgrade, do you need to reload all of your serial numbers for certain programs, because i lost my box for final cut studio, and dont want to upgrade or clean install and not be able to use it. can i put an application on a harddrive and not have to worry about redoing all the serial numbers?

When I took the upgrade route, 2 or 3 programs did need their Serial Number/Registration Key to be re-installed.