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I've had a copy of SL sitting on my desk for the past 4 days...

You can try Snow Leopard, but do a backup with Time Machine first. Then if all goes haywire, just use system restore on the Snow Leopard DVD to set you back to 10.5.8.

My upgrade and clean install experience was awful on both trys, but your mileage may vary. ;)
 
I did a fully clean install (by that I mean I backup, format, install, and then bring back my files but NEVER preferences - what's the point of a clean install?) and as far as the system is concerned i'm extremely happy with it :)

Saying that:

Some applications don't work (iStumbler, Growl etc.)

Quicktime X sucks so bad it's laughable

"Sleep" or "Screensaver" apparently means your display sleeping too :rolleyes: Now whenever my display goes to sleep (10mins) it requires a password to use my Mac again

Other such stupid things Apple have done - changing to calculating disk space in base-10 etc.
 
The squeaky wheel is always heard. The 'horror' stories are only a few people and bet there are hundreds of thousands people who are more than happy.

I happen to fall under the second. SL is REALLY DAMN FAST. All my apps work and i have nothing evil to say about it.
 
I installed Snow Leopard yesterday, works very well I did a clean install.

I think you should install it OP!
 
Marcus263 said:
I've had a chance to play about with it. It is VERY BUGGY! Wifi signal drops often. The "speed increase" is negligible, I don't notice it. Sometime the Hardrive starts grinding and running crap in the background and I can't locate what it is.

My installation is a simple one, I just use default apps apart from Transmission and Skype. I haven't tinkered with the System Settings at all, never installed a screensaver or anything. Basically it's OTB Mac and it still messes up.

I think those that are saying install it either have experience in troubleshooting, have a tone of patience or like to fix things.

My advice is to STAY AWAY until it's fixed. You will regret it if you install right now.
Click to expand...

I did a clean install with no issues afterwards, runs as stable as Leopard, notice a small performance increase and the spinning beachball is a far less frequent visitor :D I have had 0 issues with wi fi, works perfectly.

I haven't had to do any troubleshooting, or be patient and had to fix things, it has just worked. Know regrets here on upgrading.

On the otherhand though to the OP, if you're happy with Leopard then leave it be. We're not really going to see what SL is capable of until we see programs that take advantage GDC and Open CL.
 
ziggyonice said:
Snow Leopard runs great. The people who have it running fine aren't complaining about it -- because what do they have to complain about if it's running fine?

All you're reading are the few horror stories that are few and far between. Get over it and install it, it runs like a charm.
Click to expand...

This cannot be repeated enough. Of course it's going to have its share of bugs, but they're not show stopper. Whatever you do, if you do end up installing it, DO A CLEAN INSTALL.

Again, DO A CLEAN INSTALL. 90% of these posts your read that have this insane issues are people who upgraded, which is always a bad idea.
 
Tmlcky said:
The version 5 (beta) is SL compatible, see the m-c website.
Click to expand...

Yea, but dont you have to run the applications you want to use it in, in 32-bit mode? Like Safari, Mail, iCal, etc? I've heard that running them in 32-bit mode, slows them down a good bit, especially in start-up of said apps?

Thanks!
 
Diaresi said:
"Sleep" or "Screensaver" apparently means your display sleeping too :rolleyes: Now whenever my display goes to sleep (10mins) it requires a password to use my Mac again.
Click to expand...

Try unchecking the option for the password on wake. It is in System Preferences:Security. See attached image.

Also, what do you mean by this:
""Sleep" or "Screensaver" apparently means your display sleeping too"
 

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sidewinder said:
This is utter bull! The overwhelming majority of installs are going to be the default install which is an improved "archive and install".
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Yep, a "dirty" :D install worked for me. 35 minutes and I was up and away just like before with no problems.

It kind of pisses me off because I had carved out a full day to deal with this and my wife found out I was free so she made me do other crap. Damn you Apple.
 
I think people misunderstand the difference between a 'clean' install and an upgrade.

The only real difference from what I have seen (doing it both ways) is that in an upgrade, Snow Leopard will effectively isolate the users, applications and settings during the upgrade and then bring those items back in similar to Migration Assistant. Any applications that are known to be incompatible are quarantined.

That's really almost no different than doing a clean upgrade and then running migration assistant to bring users and apps back in.

So, for most cases there should be no difference in upgrading vs new installation.

The exception would be heavily customized systems that have lots of 3rd party plugins, apps, hacks and extensions that might cause things to crash when being run under SL.

I highly doubt that most of the users complaining very loudly about SL crashes, instabilities, etc, are giving us the full picture on what the history of their systems are.
 
jmpage2 said:
I think people misunderstand the difference between a 'clean' install and an upgrade.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but I take a "clean install" to mean nuking the drive, installing applications from scratch then dragging over data from a backup. No migration assistant involved.

I believe most know that as well.
 
i also have a copy of snow leopard sitting on my desk, as I am waiting to get my broken drive back from Western Digital. I would never do an upgrade without a backup.
 
vader1990 said:
Maybe I'll wait for 10.6.1 to be released and then install it....
Click to expand...

First, I admire your willingness to wait and also to research things further before doing something like a major OS upgrade. We need more people like that at work. :)

Second, 10.6.1 is looking to be a rather minor update (aside from the Flash upgrade); seed notes were leaked the other day and it's only 71.5 MB:

https://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/03/some-details-on-first-mac-os-x-10-6-1-seed-build-10b503/

So I don't think this is going to significantly change things for the majority of users. Perhaps in 10.6.2 or 10.6.3...

Third, your BEST defense against upgrade issues are threefold:

  1. Boot off the SL DVD, run Disk Utility, and do a Repair Disk -- just to make 100% sure your filesystems are sane.
  2. Run AppFresh (free, if you don't already have it) to update every app it can find updates for. That'll go a long way. For a few apps, you may have to manually download and install beta versions for SL compatibility. This can be done while you're in Leopard.
  3. Then finally, right before you're ready to upgrade to SL, do a backup. Time Machine on an external drive is highly recommended. Alternatively, CCC or SuperDuper!
Fourth, if for some strange reason, SL is really not working out for you then all you have to do is boot into the Leopard DVD and then install using your most recent pre-upgrade Time Machine backup.

For every horror story you hear here, there's probably 99 success stories -- most of which you'll never hear about. As long as you do these three key pre-upgrade steps, I think that'll make it much more likely you'll end up with a smile plastered on your face post-upgrade. :D

Good luck and please let us know how it works out once you take the plunge at some point.
 
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