When Upgrading to Tiger

Another new guy question from me to all of you experienced Macs out there:
When I upgrade to Tiger when it becomes available, will I need to transfer all my programs, files, etc. by means of a dvd-r, or will my programs and files not be written over by Tiger? thanks again guys.

nope...you will have no problem upgrading....backing up and everything is not necessary....
-chris

In regards to upgrading, is it better to backup and then reformat the HDD and install Tiger - or would it make no difference to just installing/upgrading Tiger over Panther.

I have just become a mac user, and have been a long time Windows user, and have done heaps of upgrades on various PC machines, and usually I find that for best results is to do a reformat and install, else if just upgrading the PC can become sluggish.

That's just PCs. OS X is designed *properly* The OS is essentially just a folder with just the OS inside it - none of this registry malarkey or spreading half the OS across Program Files etc.

ahh what a relief. thanks guys! :mac:

I usually still do a backup and then reformat my drive and install Tiger, just so that I know it's perfectly clean. You don't have to do this at all, but I know some people do. They make it really easy to upgrade and I am actually thinking that when I upgrade to Tiger at least 10.4.2 then I probably will not do a clean install just for the reason people mentioned above.. Apple has done a really great job of doing the upgrades and not causing problems in the process.

Just a note for all upgraders to tiger. Turn off all programs that you have set to load on login. Then test them once installed. As an example Virtue and Desktop Manager do not work in the current release of Tiger Beta. If you have a program which has issues running on login then the upgrade could get a little messy.

Or to make it quicker.. when you login, hold the shift button down, which bypasses all the login items, thus freeing your system resources for the upgrade.