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I'm normally a careful sort... I was going to wait until all you brave souls loaded Panther, suffered, then solved. I'd move in at that time. But I was sitting here holding Panther in my hand, and staring at my new AlBook. Should I? I did. Heck, I have enough gear that I didn't even bother backing up much less following the fine tips here and at MacFixit.
The install went fine, and Panther successfully booted right after. I fixed disk permissions, rebooted, then proceeded to explore. All my apps worked fine (about 30 high-end thingees like Dreamweaver MX, PS 7, Office, etc. etc. but I didn't check Palm or Docs to Go since I didn't have my Tungsten on me). It IS speedier, and there are no font issues. Printing to HP lasers worked FASTER. The finder is excellent, and I particularly like the server window instead of "go". Access to my iDisk is like it's in the next room compared to the spinning clock in 9 and the ball in 10.2. Expose, rather than being eye-candy, is going to increase my productivity right now. All in all: Panther is simply the finest OS I have ever used... and that's only after playing a few hours. I know I might come back to Earth, but I say "might" and frankly I doubt it. Buy Panther like yesterday, man. Note: I have XP on an HP tablet, and it's even more of a joke now. How can ANY sane person justify using XP? Brainwashed fools.
 
Breaking News: OS upgrade improves system performance

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this but an amazing thing just happened. I bought an upgrade to my operating system and it made my computer *faster*. I run a TiBook 667 with 512MB and a very sweet 7200RPM 60GB Hitachi drive. I installed 10.3 over the weekend and I'm impressed, the whole system is more responsive, startup times are awesome, and I'm sure text is easier to read on screen.

But the most amazing thing is, 10.3 improved my system performance. Have you ever upgraded an OS in the Windows world? Generally you pay for the upgrade and then pay for the extra RAM you need just to get performance back to an acceptable level. This is normal. In most cases you are better off just buying a new computer with the new OS already loaded.

The downside of this for Apple is that I'm now sticking with my TiBook until at least rev A of the G5 AlBook (actually I was planning to anyway but now I've got a good excuse).
 
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