Waiting for Leopard

[Howard Brazee]

My wife is getting ready to buy an iMac. I gave her half the money with a gift card from the local Apple store, and she's arguing with herself about borrowing and having her Mac sooner.

But a friend told me that she should wait for the next OS anyway.

Should she wait until March?

 

[Tarkovsky]

The upgrades not going to be that expensive, especially if you split the cost of a 5 install disc.

 

[TheAnswer]

First off, March is a rumored timeframe, could be later or sooner. No one knows for sure. Second, it would be better to wait at least a couple weeks after it comes out as there might be some unforeseen issues when it's release (compatibility problems, etc).

Secondly, it really depends how much she would use the computer between now and then. The Leopard upgrade will likely be around $130...so if she is going to get that much use out of it before that point, then go ahead and sooner. But if she's not going to, it might be better to wait.

 

[Killyp]

Personally? I would wait...

Family pack of Leopard will cost around £120, single pack will be around £90.

If you wait, it'll come pre-loaded with Leopard...

 

[Howard Brazee]

Besides the cost - I'm from a Mainframe, Mini-computer, and Windows background - I've never seen upgrades to be as nice as clean installs.

 

[Killyp]

Besides the cost - I'm from a Mainframe, Mini-computer, and Windows background - I've never seen upgrades to be as nice as clean installs.

OS X generally is pretty good. I upgraded my G3 from 10.1 to 10.4, and it went perfectly. Not everybody has this experience though, so I'd say wait until it comes out.

Or you could go ahead and get the iMac, then buy Leopard later on, after all the bugs have been ironed out, but making sure you back everything up (really easy to take a bootable disk image in OS X btw for backup).


Having said that, Apple has changed the way Leopard is packaged, so maybe it will be more reliable.

Either way, this close on, I'd wait. It's only a few hours to go until MacWorld, when it will be announced when Leopard is coming out...

 

[Keebler]

Besides the cost - I'm from a Mainframe, Mini-computer, and Windows background - I've never seen upgrades to be as nice as clean installs.

howard, i can assure you that upgrade installs with a mac are seamless. i worried after coming from a pc world....installed panther over jaguar and there was no difference, no new drivers to install...no nothing.

worked as good, in fact, better than the other. it's so painless, it's unbelievable...no worries there.

 

[emptyCup]

I've never had any problems upgrading either and I've done it on many machines. It's a personal preference, though.

 

[bobcan]

Re: Waiting... Leopard....

My wife is getting ready to buy an iMac. I gave her half the money with a gift card from the local Apple store, and she's arguing with herself about borrowing and having her Mac sooner.

But a friend told me that she should wait for the next OS anyway.

Should she wait until March?

..from the "new guy" in Canada... I would have to think it wise to wait until announcements from "Shows" are made... Perhaps a few days wait would make several $$ difference and give a New Computer Purchaser the Best Bang for the Buck!! The OS may be secondary if new items/ deals appear this week...

Either way, I am a new Macbook Pro user and I love this thing!!😀

 

[Tarkovsky]

Oh I was implying wait for that maybe not march... I doubt Leopard will be released tommorow. But the again Apple might be just about to slap us all in the face with a wet salmon....

 

[Howard Brazee]

I'm still not finding the release date.

She will also need Office - I see that the next version of Office runs natively on Power PC chips and Intel - does that mean the current version runs through an emulator? Does that matter much?

 

[Eraserhead]

I'm still not finding the release date.

She will also need Office - I see that the next version of Office runs natively on Power PC chips and Intel - does that mean the current version runs through an emulator? Does that matter much?

Yes it is emulated, but Office is perfectly useable, though a RAM upgrade to 2GB is worthwhile if you can afford it. Some benchmarks show Photoshop CS2 (which is also emulated) being as fast on a Core-2 iMac as a G5 iMac from last year. Universal applications are obviously a lot quicker, about twice as fast.

If you do an archive and install of Leopard all the old crap is removed, it's a totally smooth upgrade, as easy as installing any other application.

 

[Howard Brazee]

She got antsy - we bought her iMac yesterday. Maybe that's why Apple did not announce when the upgrade would be available.

 

[neyoung]

Congrats on the purchase!

Playing the waiting game gets old quick 🙂