Need iCloud - have Snow Leopard. Which upgrade?

[macmesser]

My '09 Mac Pro just became my main computer so I need it to access my iCloud account. I don't want to break anything so I'm a bit leery about upgrading the OS and wondering if I should go all the way to ML or go with Lion (which was running nicely on my Macbook until the boot partition got corrupted). If I go with Lion the nice thing is I'll eventually be running one OS on both computers. Are there likely to be problems if I go to ML or Lion, and which would be safer? I'm running only pretty standard applications/devices (PS CS6, Extensis Portfolio 8.5, Bridge, Lightroom, Canon EOS stuff, older Wacom Intuos tablet, HP Laserjet wireless network multifunction printer, Script Debugger, various well known utilities) so I'm not too worried about those but I do have a SATA 3 card and external enclosure from Sans Digital. Should upgrading be fairly uneventful and should I go Lion or ML to ease the process? For mail I do need iCloud and I don't have time right now to solve incompatibility problems. Insights, experiences appreciated.

[tersono]

ML generally runs better than Lion on most hardware. Worth going all the way IMO. Note, however, that you don't need to upgrade if all you're worried about is email. iCloud email is just standard IMAP + SMTP. Any mail client can be configured to access it.

[macmesser]

Originally Posted by tersono

ML generally runs better than Lion on most hardware. Worth going all the way IMO

Thanks! Did you have any problems after upgrading?

[C. Alan]

I just upgraded my '09 Mac Pro from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. The only thing that was holding me back in the past was the lack of Quicken '07 support. Quicken has since fixed that problem, so I went ahead and did the upgrade over the weekend. So far, I have not had any problems. The only application I lost in the conversion was an old text editor. I still have Snow Leopard on a separate partition if I really need it.

BTW, I did not install in on my SSD. It went on a new 1TB HD. I will be removing my SSD soon, as I haven't seen a lot of improvement with it given the way I run my Mac.
--C. Alan