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Ram Mac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 3, 2009
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Hey guys, I have been reading up on Snow Leopard and I cannot decide whether or not it is worth it to buy it. I mean only $30 for an upgrade is an amazing price. But it seems that even with your $30, you are not getting your money's worth. So I don't know if I should get it or not? What are your thoughts? Pros and cons please
 
Seriously?

It's $25 shipped on Amazon. That's ridiculous cheap and your system runs faster. I don't know why anyone wouldn't unless they really couldn't afford the $25-$30.

Plus, you might be kicking yourself in the butt when the next upgrade comes.

Small investment, small upgrade. :apple:
 
Hey guys, I have been reading up on Snow Leopard and I cannot decide whether or not it is worth it to buy it. I mean only $30 for an upgrade is an amazing price. But it seems that even with your $30, you are not getting your money's worth. So I don't know if I should get it or not? What are your thoughts? Pros and cons please

Not worth it. You will notice no difference. Wait a year and apple will give it to you for 5$.
 
Seriously?

It's $25 shipped on Amazon. That's ridiculous cheap and your system runs faster. I don't know why anyone wouldn't unless they really couldn't afford the $25-$30.

Plus, you might be kicking yourself in the butt when the next upgrade comes.

Small investment, small upgrade. :apple:

I am a college student. I am poor lol, plus most of my college stuff runs off 32 bit, can you get 32 bit snow leopard?
 
Well, you don't really have to get it ... but $30 isn't that much in the grand scheme of things. If you consider how much time you will spend on the computer, not getting it seems ridiculous from that perspective.

Snow Leopard boots 32 and 64 bit from the same install CD. There is no separate 32 bit version like on Windows or Linux.

And it really does make your Intel Mac run faster (for perspective, I am running a 2006 Core Duo mini.)
 
And it really does make your Intel Mac run faster (for perspective, I am running a 2006 Core Duo mini.)
There's a benchmark thread around here somewhere that contradicts this statement. Negligible difference - not enough to notice.

I certainly can't tell.
 
Seriously?

It's $25 shipped on Amazon. That's ridiculous cheap and your system runs faster. I don't know why anyone wouldn't unless they really couldn't afford the $25-$30.

Plus, you might be kicking yourself in the butt when the next upgrade comes.

Small investment, small upgrade. :apple:

as many people mentioned, there is likely no noticeable speed difference.

it will save GB size HDD space, is that a big enough plus?

On the downside:

people likely need to reinstall a system, a clean installation, think about all the labor

many apps will be broken, think about the problems.

any new 0.1 OS from apple are always having significant amount of bugs, think about 6 months of buggy season.

So I say, so far, it looks not worth it.
 
Yes. Snow Leopard is hands down worth buying and as far as I'm concerned it's a necessary upgrade for Intel macs.

There are VERY VERY few "broken" apps out there. 95% of what's out there for Leopard works for Snow Leopard. These people who claim that the first 6 months are buggy are either uber elite power users who can't afford one single moment of down time or they have one app acting up on them and they throw an absolute fit.

For $30 you are absolutely getting your money's worth. You get new Expose features, Stacks can be drilled into with folder after folder, faster time machine backups, you regain like 10gb or more disc space and 64 bit for nearly all your apps and I've found they do launch faster. Not to mention Grand Central Dispatch and Open CL. These two tools are gonna be the biggest and best things once the Snow Leopard specific apps from Apple, Adobe and others actually take the time to implement them.
 
There's a benchmark thread around here somewhere that contradicts this statement. Negligible difference - not enough to notice.

I certainly can't tell.

That is really strange, I'm seeing a big difference on our UMB. Everything seems faster.
 
as many people mentioned, there is likely no noticeable speed difference.

it will save GB size HDD space, is that a big enough plus?

On the downside:

people likely need to reinstall a system, a clean installation, think about all the labor

many apps will be broken, think about the problems.

any new 0.1 OS from apple are always having significant amount of bugs, think about 6 months of buggy season.

So I say, so far, it looks not worth it.

This is simply not true. You do not need to preform a clean install, the standard upgrade worked flawlessly. I have no broken apps, and not even one bug to report. I would recommend SL to everyone.
 
This is simply not true. You do not need to preform a clean install, the standard upgrade worked flawlessly. I have no broken apps, and not even one bug to report. I would recommend SL to everyone.

LMFAO! The upgrade was a piece of cow poop IMO. However a complete re-install cured my problems, and may do the same for others as well. I would say yes it's worth it, but be prepared to troubleshoot. This is not a straight forward upgrade, ala Vista.
 
That is really strange, I'm seeing a big difference on our UMB. Everything seems faster.
Indeed a few apps open a little quicker and boot time is a couple of seconds faster but most likely your SL install just tidied up some things and removed some clutter.
 
LMFAO! The upgrade was a piece of cow poop IMO. However a complete re-install cured my problems, and may do the same for others as well. I would say yes it's worth it, but be prepared to troubleshoot. This is not a straight forward upgrade, ala Vista.

Wrong. Many of the people hear and my own friends did an upgrade install with no issues at all. And trust me, they'd be on the phone with me asking questions. Screen sharing in iChat is my friend :p Anyway, I chose to do a clean install because I'm a lazy ass that doesn't keep my primary library clean as I should so this is a way to make me do it. I also like the idea of cleaning it all up and starting fresh every year. I'm OCD.
 
LMFAO! The upgrade was a piece of cow poop IMO. However a complete re-install cured my problems, and may do the same for others as well. I would say yes it's worth it, but be prepared to troubleshoot. This is not a straight forward upgrade, ala Vista.

There has to be a reason why we had opposite experiences. How much did you tweaked your system prior to upgrading?
 
There's a benchmark thread around here somewhere that contradicts this statement. Negligible difference - not enough to notice.

I certainly can't tell.

I certainly CAN tell an increase in speed and my Geekbench 32-bit scores have been 110 - 115 points higher than they were with Leopard.
 
Not worth it, ran it on a 2006 macbook and downgraded after a week.

Everything was sluggish, but the new features are pretty nice.
 
Not worth it, ran it on a 2006 macbook and downgraded after a week.

Everything was sluggish, but the new features are pretty nice.
Running it on a 2006 mini, no sluggishness here ... Did a clean install though. Too bad Apple hasn't gotten upgrade installs down yet. :(
 
Wrong. Many of the people hear and my own friends did an upgrade install with no issues at all. And trust me, they'd be on the phone with me asking questions. Screen sharing in iChat is my friend :p Anyway, I chose to do a clean install because I'm a lazy ass that doesn't keep my primary library clean as I should so this is a way to make me do it. I also like the idea of cleaning it all up and starting fresh every year. I'm OCD.

Yes, yes, I know. Apple does nothing wrong, and all the users are at fault. :rolleyes:

**** happens sometimes, accept it.

There has to be a reason why we had opposite experiences. How much did you tweaked your system prior to upgrading?

Unknown to me. Nothing was tweaked to be honest. All Leopard updates were applied, firmware was up to date, and I had no hardware issues according to hardware tests. Somehow importing my Leopard preferences fought mightily with Snow Leopard's system. It was one of the strangest things I've seen in an Apple OS upgrade.
 
Wrong. Many of the people hear and my own friends did an upgrade install with no issues at all. And trust me, they'd be on the phone with me asking questions. Screen sharing in iChat is my friend :p Anyway, I chose to do a clean install because I'm a lazy ass that doesn't keep my primary library clean as I should so this is a way to make me do it. I also like the idea of cleaning it all up and starting fresh every year. I'm OCD.

This is simply not true. You do not need to preform a clean install, the standard upgrade worked flawlessly. I have no broken apps, and not even one bug to report. I would recommend SL to everyone.

obviously no conclusion will be 100% true to everybody, so your own opinion or mine opinion don't really matters.

what matters? there was a poll here at MR (maybe Mroogle for it?), showing clean installation is the more preferred solution by majority of the people here.

If you want to use one or two cases of your own success to imply that its the case for everybody, then get a rest.
 
Hey guys, I have been reading up on Snow Leopard and I cannot decide whether or not it is worth it to buy it. I mean only $30 for an upgrade is an amazing price. But it seems that even with your $30, you are not getting your money's worth. So I don't know if I should get it or not? What are your thoughts? Pros and cons please

It's your $30. Only you can decide. Go play with a Snow Leopard install at an Apple Store.

I would have happily paid more. I like the tweaks, but I'm in my thirties and somewhat financially stable. If I was a college student trying to decide between Snow Leopard and beer, ahem I mean textbooks, I would probably wait a while. You will get it for $10-15 in a few months.
 
Do you guys think that Snow Leopard will make World Of Wacraft run faster and have better fps?
 
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