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Bought SL the day it came out, still sitting on my desk...

V

vader1990

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 23, 2008
220
2
So, as my title says, I bought SL the day it came out, but its still sitting on my desk, b/c I keep hearing stories from my friends on this board that SL is Apple's "vista" and it breaks everything and its just horrible. One of my friends couldn't use CS4, a bunch of them tell me MS 08 is mad slow, and for one of them Airport is broken.

So I have time to kill this weekend, so do you guys think its finally "safe" to take the plunge and upgrade? I use multiclutch HEAVILY in Safari, so do you think this will be a problem for me to adjust to? I dont mind changing to 32-bit on Safari, but it will suck if it impacts speed by a ton?!

So can you guys give me some good reasons to upgrade?

I'm an Engineering college student, so I basically just use programming, matlab, a LOT of HD movie watching programs :D Like I watch A LOT of HD stuff, while I have like MATLAB open and Safari with 6 tabs open and like excel and word, haha. I also hate slow downs!

I have a 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, 250 hd, unibody macbook pro from october 08

Thanks guys!!
 
Go ahead and upgrade--- SL is working just fine for me on my 2.4 unibody Macbook Pro. I was also put off by the comments on this board but I finally went ahead and did a wipe and clean install of SL last night. Safari is noticeably speedier, and MS Office 08 launches as fast if not faster than in Leopard. Most other apps also launch a tiny bit quicker. No stability issues or unexpected beachballing so far.

My system does run a *little bit* warmer in SL, I'd say about 4 degrees C more. Right now it's idling at 47 degrees C with the Nvidia 9400 on and just Safari and Mail running.

I suggest doing a wipe and clean install if you want to play it safe, and it's nice to have a fresh new computer and OS.
 
vader1990 said:
So, as my title says, I bought SL the day it came out, but its still sitting on my desk, b/c I keep hearing stories from my friends on this board that SL is Apple's "vista" and it breaks everything and its just horrible. One of my friends couldn't use CS4, a bunch of them tell me MS 08 is mad slow, and for one of them Airport is broken.
Click to expand...
I have not experienced any of those problems and I installed on the first day. We already have had on OS update (10.6.1). Snow Leopard has worked flawlessly for me and tons of others. Unless you have incompatible software (which is true for any platform or OS), you should be just fine. Saying that it is equivalent to Vista is laughable to say the least.

So I have time to kill this weekend, so do you guys think its finally "safe" to take the plunge and upgrade? I use multiclutch HEAVILY in Safari, so do you think this will be a problem for me to adjust to? I dont mind changing to 32-bit on Safari, but it will suck if it impacts speed by a ton?!
Click to expand...
Check the developers websites to make sure your software is up to date, eliminate all the haxies you may have. Make a backup! Snow Leopard installation will identify most outright incompatible, but I think you should be fine. The lions sure of reviews says that that upgrading is safe unless you have stuff that you know is incompatible. Most of the negatives that I have read are common with any OS update - stuff not working right. Thats why I emphasize checking with the software developers to check up on compatibility

So can you guys give me some good reasons to upgrade?
Click to expand...
I don’t think that, I can. My reasons may not have any applicability to you. I upgraded because I could and I wanted to exploit the features that Apple advertised.

I'm an Engineering college student, so I basically just use programming, matlab, a LOT of HD movie watching programs :D Like I watch A LOT of HD stuff, while I have like MATLAB open and Safari with 6 tabs open and like excel and word, haha. I also hate slow downs!
Click to expand...

OK. Your ability to do what you want is more dependent on hardware than software. Snow Leopard is a foundation for newer technologies down the line. It’s not really going to make your Mac magically be much faster. If you develop software, you will like alot of the new APT tech and Math Lab may support more Mac technology like Grand Central.

I have a 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, 250 hd, unibody macbook pro from october 08
Click to expand...

Your Mac is very capable. I would look at upgrading your Ram as much as possible if you really want your Mac to perform well, but you should be just fine as long as you have compatible software. Check for that and backup. I have a mac 2 years older than yours and it runs Snow Leopard just fine.
 
We already have an ongoing thread entitled "Is it now safe to install Snow Leopard". Please check it out. However, I will give you this idea and this should be quite helpful in addressing your doubts. Firstly, there's nothing wrong with SL, I've installed it on 5 of my Macs and not a hitch out of either of them, but of course, you'll probably prefer to care only about the people posting negatives, so here is my idea for you.

Just create a partition on your hard drive, say 30GB. Install SL onto it and test out your apps. This way your original install is still in tact. If things workout perfectly then drop the partition and do the upgrade, but I strongly recommend to do a full erase and install and not to upgrade over your existing install, if you want the best results.
 
When Leopard came out it was the exact same thing: horror stories from some people and great experiences from others. I don't think Snow Leopard is any worse than Leopard when it came out.
 
Dear Lord Vader1990 :D

Several suggestions:

1. Upgrade from 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM, especially if you're running these sorts of apps.

2. If you have concerns about SL compatibility, why not get (buy or borrow) an external HD, clone your internal HD to it using CCC or SuperDuper! then upgrade to SL on the external HD only. Then you can boot off the external HD and play around. If you don't like SL, you can always boot off the internal HD.

3. Before doing the upgrade, make sure you run AppFresh (free and a great utility) to update all of your updateable apps. That will go a long way in improving the SL upgrade experience.

Just one comment:

You'll hear the horror stories here because for the 99% that found SL to work well or acceptably, you won't hear from millions of people posting "No problem!" here. You'll hear from the people who DID have issues, so...
 
I've never installed an operating system on windows computers nor Macs in my life, but I just upgraded my iMac to snow leopard and also upgraded and installed snow leopard on my grand daughter's Macbook without any problems whatsoever. I am a recent switcher and still don't know everything there is to know about a Mac, but I'm learning. So vader1990 if I can do it as an almost newbie I'm sure you can do it too without any problems. I might also add that I was a little scared to do it at the time, but I said to myself that it had to be done eventually and so I just did it. And I might add that I am a lot older than anybody in this forum. :D Everything works fine too.
 
I installed SL the first week on my '07 MacBook Pro. A month later, I'm left ambivalent on it. Because of that, I've held off on upgrading my wife's new iMac, bought in August. The last big concern is CS3: she uses it professionally and I don't want to break it.
 
DaveF said:
I installed SL the first week on my '07 MacBook Pro. A month later, I'm left ambivalent on it. Because of that, I've held off on upgrading my wife's new iMac, bought in August. The last big concern is CS3: she uses it professionally and I don't want to break it.
Click to expand...

Could do several things:

1) Hook up an external HD and clone the internal drive to it then upgrade the external only. Leaves you with a fallback strategy.

2) Have your wife review the known CS3 issues with SL to see if there's any glaring problems she'd see with her workflow:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51215.html
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51229.html
 
electroshock said:
Could do several things:

1) Hook up an external HD and clone the internal drive to it then upgrade the external only. Leaves you with a fallback strategy.

2) Have your wife review the known CS3 issues with SL to see if there's any glaring problems she'd see with her workflow:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51215.html
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51229.html
Click to expand...

I've considered this, and did just that for my upgrade. However, it significantly interferes with the normal backup routine, which adds risk.

As for Adobe, they don't seem to have evaluated InDesign or Illustrator, so I can't completely tell my wife what to expect. And this is the issue that worries me most:
When opening and saving, applications, including Adobe applications, may sporatically crash
Click to expand...
 
DaveF said:
I've considered this, and did just that for my upgrade. However, it significantly interferes with the normal backup routine, which adds risk.

As for Adobe, they don't seem to have evaluated InDesign or Illustrator, so I can't completely tell my wife what to expect. And this is the issue that worries me most:
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Nothing wrong with staying with the tried-and-true Leopard, either.
 
DaveF said:
I've considered this, and did just that for my upgrade. However, it significantly interferes with the normal backup routine, which adds risk.

As for Adobe, they don't seem to have evaluated InDesign or Illustrator, so I can't completely tell my wife what to expect. And this is the issue that worries me most:
Click to expand...

I've heard a lot of reports of Illustrator CS3 crashing
in Snow Leopard. I would be cautious.
 
electroshock said:
Fair enough. Nothing wrong with staying with the tried-and-true Leopard, either.
Click to expand...
She'll upgrade to CS5 next year, and I'll upgrade her to SL then, if I don't do it sooner.

But for now, extra-crashy CS3 when that pays bills is a bad thing :)
 
To the OP - UPGRADE, UPGRADE, UPGRADE.....

I find it really hard to believe that anyone can ever compare the SL upgrade to Vista. I've had it running on my machine for almost a month with no problems whatsoever. My Mac friends have the same experience. They don't need to post on message boards to tell everyone that. Those with the problems do... You'll be fine and find that your Mac runs a little or a lot faster...
 
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