Leopard upgrade - 'clean' install or upgrade from Tiger

[bertpalmer]

Hello everybody.

I have just bought a new MBP (with 2 years warranty) and it came new with Tiger (it is a santa rosa).

Today I bought Leopard but I'm not sure whether I should format the HD and start afresh with Leopard or just do an upgrade over Tiger?

Coming from Windows I am tempted to start afresh but will there be an advantage?

Advice please!

 

[.adam]

Many people here will advocate an archive and install (does as it says on the tin - archives your data into a file on your HDD and installs the OS around it) but personally I went for a fresh install.

I had a 250GB external HDD so I backed up all my docs, photos, music etc. and wiped the old OS then installed the Leopard from scratch. I think this is the pure way of doing it and will guarantee your MBP to run swiftly. I've had no probs since doing so and customised my install by leaving out print drivers (I manually installed the two drivers I needed after installing the OS), XCode (I have no use for it) and unnecessary language files - all saving me a few gigs.

As I say I'm sure others will vouch for different methods but this clean, easy method worked well for me.

Good luck with whatever option you take.

 

[bertpalmer]

Many people here will advocate an archive and install (does as it says on the tin - archives your data into a file on your HDD and installs the OS around it) but personally I went for a fresh install.

I had a 250GB external HDD so I backed up all my docs, photos, music etc. and wiped the old OS then installed the Leopard from scratch. I think this is the pure way of doing it and will guarantee your MBP to run swiftly. I've had no probs since doing so and customised my install by leaving out print drivers (I manually installed the two drivers I needed after installing the OS), XCode (I have no use for it) and unnecessary language files - all saving me a few gigs.

As I say I'm sure others will vouch for different methods but this clean, easy method worked well for me.

Good luck with whatever option you take.

Thanks - I'm leaning towards doing the same.

Anything else to leave out apart from language and print drivers?

 

[.adam]

Like I mentioned I have no use for XCode (as I'm sure 90% of mac users don't) as I'm not a developer/coder - saves a fair bit by leaving it out. I just left English language in too - I seem to remember each language being 100MB+.

 

[dejo]

Xcode is not installed by default anyways.

And Apple expends a good amount of effort trying to ensure that upgrades work as smooth as clean installs. If you have a good backup, it's worth a shot, yes?