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Twaize

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2008
63
1
Hi there,

I'm planning on buying a Macbook Pro 13" sometime during early August, so my question is that.
Is an update of OS X from 10.5 to 10.6 just as effective as a fresh install of 10.6? I have bad memories from upgrading from one version of windows to another, and was simply wondering whether there would be any "excess litter"?

Thank you
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
Hi there,

I'm planning on buying a Macbook Pro 13" sometime during early August, so my question is that.
Is an update of OS X from 10.5 to 10.6 just as effective as a fresh install of 10.6? I have bad memories from upgrading from one version of windows to another, and was simply wondering whether there would be any "excess litter"?

Thank you

Upgrading OSX isn't the same as upgrading Windows. I had no bad experience with upgrading either Mac OS X or any *nix flavors. They both are intelligent enough to do it without screwing up the rest of the system.

But 10.6 should have the option of archiving old files and installing a fresh copy of SL or you can perform an erase and install option which'll format the drive and install SL.
 

Twaize

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2008
63
1
It's not windows, you'll be fine! ;)

Footprint might not be reduced, and some of the many new features might be such an integral part of the OS, that it won't work properly? I know I'm probably just getting fuzzy over nothing, but I'd rather buy it in early August and play with it during the summer, than wait until September when uni has started again.

Thank you for your help.

@Eidorian
Thank you as well, seems like a really cool feature.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
Archive & Install is a very cool feature indeed. As always have a backup nonetheless. Time Machine makes it trivial.
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
Footprint might not be reduced, and some of the many new features might be such an integral part of the OS, that it won't work properly? I know I'm probably just getting fuzzy over nothing, but I'd rather buy it in early August and play with it during the summer, than wait until September when uni has started again.

Thank you for your help.

@Eidorian
Thank you as well, seems like a really cool feature.

As long as you have time machine backups and keep all of your stuff organized in where it should be, the upgrade should go fine.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
Mac OSX unlike Windows separates all the main system files, personal files and so on so that reinstalling a new OS only requires modifying the system folders, there is no registry to mess with like in Windows. All the applications are contained within their own .app container and the perfs are stored all in central locations inside the user folder. OSX installer doesn't touch any of those thus there's nothing to screw up.
I think you might want to fix that.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
Fix what exactly? If I am incorrect, please feel free to correct me. My English may not be the best but I am not sure what I said was wrong.
Windows has separate user and system space as well.

OS X doesn't prevent the user from modifying the system space either.
 

t0mat0

macrumors 603
Aug 29, 2006
5,473
284
Home
Pre-OS upgrade is always an good time to look at making a decent backup of data, if any user hasn't done it before. Boring, but always worth mentioning :)
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
Windows has separate user and system space as well.

OS X doesn't prevent the user from modifying the system space either.

Technically you're right. Both OS have separation land for both system and user but OS X specifically more than Windows "encourage" people to place their applications and personal files inside their home folder and applications. Almost all applications store their pref inside the user's library folder.

Last I checked, C:\ is still visible to users and does not discourage users to put files in there. I still see people putting their crap inside C:\ instead of their "Documents" folder. Applications still use registry to store their stuff. This have changed lately with Vista and W7 and is improving but people are stubborn and are used to their XP's style.

Think about the way the installers work on Windows, they almost always ask users where they want to install the apps, I know a lot of people who still install it in C:\. Now reinstall Windows with the clean registry, there's a lot of apps that won't work because the info is missing, .dlls is missing and so on. Something that pissed me off when I reinstalled Vista for a friend of mine and some of his app won't work because they are missing the registration information, some crap is not working at all.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
Technically you're right. Both OS have separation land for both system and user but OS X specifically more than Windows "encourage" people to place their applications and personal files inside their home folder.

Last I checked, C:\ is still visible to users and does not discourage users to put files in there. I still see people putting their crap inside C:\ instead of their "Documents" folder. Applications still use registry to store their stuff. This have changed lately with Vista and W7 and is improving but people are stubborn and are used to their XP's style.

Think about the way the installers work on Windows, they almost always ask users where they want to install the apps, I know a lot of people who still install it in C:\. Now reinstall Windows with the clean registry, there's a lot of apps that won't work because the info is missing, .dlls is missing and so on.
The user's actions are the causes of the majority of the problems?

/ is visible to users and I've seen people place their files there. Lets not even delve into Desktops with hundreds of files regardless of the operating system.

I've sadly had to encourage some users to install applications onto their desktops because they don't have administrator privileges. Not to mention that user space and accounts can roam.
 

fulcrum.1995

macrumors member
Jun 18, 2009
54
0
San Jose, California
I had a lot of problems reinstalling leopard after a kernal error. Many permissions were faulty and disk utility wouldn't repair them. I had to reinstall a lot of apps and I lost most of my preferences.

+1 for archive and instal
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
The user's actions are the causes of the majority of the problems?

/ is visible to users and I've seen people place their files there. Lets not even delve into Desktops with hundreds of files regardless of the operating system.

I've sadly had to encourage some users to install applications onto their desktops because they don't have administrator privileges. Not to mention that user space and accounts can roam.

Oh yea, Desktop is just sad but we're going off the topic, I'll correct my original post.

@OP as long as you have time machine backups and keep all of your stuff organized in where it should be, the upgrade should go fine.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
Oh yea, Desktop is just sad but we're going off the topic, I'll correct my original post.

@OP as long as you have time machine backups and keep all of your stuff organized in where it should be, the upgrade should go fine.
Thank you for considering my points based on my experiences. Sadly regardless of the operating system if you have administrator privileges you can mess things up anywhere on your computer.

I'm still surprised to find some users considering if they're going to use Time Machine or not.
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,582
1,325
Thank you for considering my points based on my experiences. Sadly regardless of the operating system if you have administrator privileges you can mess things up anywhere on your computer.

I'm still surprised to find some users considering if they're going to use Time Machine or not.

My experience as an IT Systems Engineer is 80% with Windows users, the rest of them, Mac users, I almost never had any issues with them and most of them didn't have the typical stupid stuff that Windows user pull off such as placing files outside where they should be and backups. I also encouraged all of the mac users to use Time Machine to backups or Mozy. It was much tougher to do the same for Windows users, there is no nice Windows Backup tool that is super user friendly like Time Machine. Luckily, Mozy was there to help me out.
 
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