I'm using a 20" iMac Core Duo 2ghz.
(Although I'm probably going to upgrade the cpu/hdd next year sometime, it feels faster than most computers in the office).

Finally finished downloading Leopard (thanks rsync)

Installed pretty quickly - only took 15 minutes on my iMac 20", although I am installing from a HDD, rather than CD.

Install went something like this:

Downloaded image

Tried to burn using Disk Utils or Toast, but it wasn't liking the DVD DL's I had.

So...
Disk Utilities, Restore, choose a spare hdd i can reformat, choose the image file, and click erase, and wait 10 minutes.

System Pref's, choose bootable drive as the newly zapped Leopard "dvd" image, and reboot.

Leopard comes up, (the installer is dual screen aware, which is nice), click install, and it zaps away for about 10-15min's doing stuff, then prompts for a reboot.

I'm assuming its going to do some stuff post reboot, but no, its finished installing.

Thats insanely fast.

First boot into Leopard, you get the funky space background for your login.
Machine feels a little sluggish, but thats because Spotlight is busy indexing everything.

External USB drives wouldn't mount during this process, so if you have any wait till its finished, or leave it plugged in before you reboot.

Time Machine needs a bigger drive in order for me to use it. I'm waiting on some 500G drives, so thats going to be tested next week.

Initial impressions - feels a little snappier. I installed last night, and have only really been using it this morning, so only about 1 hour of usage.

Nothing messed up in the upgrade, except that mail wants my credentials again. Mail has still got the bloody requirement to go through the setup, which is annoying, so I haven't actually opened it properly yet. (We have slightly different mail ports for spam reasons, so I have to wait 5 minutes for mail to timeout, so it give the option for changing ports, thats *still* not fixed, but its a minor issue).

Parallels and Adium seem fine.

The dock is shiny, but similar enough, not sure I like it yet, but I'll get used to it.

The Network connections (Apple K), is more or less the same, although its much faster at coming back at you if you enter the wrong credentials.
I was expecting something a little more, but its essentially unchanged except for responsiveness.

Preview has more options, although it doesn't want to browse all images in a folder, which is annoying coming from a PC.
(Yes, I know you can select all, then open in preview, but if I'm in preview already, I'd like to be able to see more images in the current image folder like windows does).
Coverflow view in Finder should make that nicer for me, but it doesn't feel like a great method to view things yet.
I'm not a fan of iTunes, and the iTunes interface -> into Finder feels forced to me. Actually it feels like I'm in iTunes, and thats not good, seeing as iTunes is a steaming pile of crap still.

iTunes...
Positives - now it prompts me for a password for stuff on network shares, instead of the dread ! next to the song when I try to play something I've haven't connected to yet.
Negatives - its still iTunes.
Dear Apple, Give me a folder list view, give me the opportunity to move music up and down in the list i'm looking at so I can choose whats next.
Yes, it still doesn't let you do that, even in the playlist view, at least on my machine.

Amarok or Songbird kick iTunes lilly white ass. I still prefer winamp.


So.... in general, feels like everything is working, and some things are improved.

Doesn't feel like a new point release to me, the major functionality is essentially a backup program, and some new views in finder.

I know the underlying libraries are extended, but for user feel, its pretty much the same. Thats not a bad thing though, familiarity is good.

The various versions of Microsoft anything cause me daily annoyance as they change / rename menu items, order at whim, so walking people through stuff on the phone gets to be on the lines of - what version are you using, ok on this version, its done this way...

I haven't tried stacks yet - I usually download stuff via BT, as opposed to in Safari, so thats really of limited use. Hopefully Transmission will integrate that in, that would be useful. There was a new version of Transmission yesterday, but I haven't read the readme yet for whats new.

Other bits and pieces - terminal is finally useful, without third party hacks.
Much more configurable stuff in terminal, now I can loose putty
(Yes, even on Mac, I preferred putty as an ssh client).

All in all, its positive. No real negatives - I even get a reasonable folder view in finder now as icon spacing is more intelligent. No more 5 miles of space around each icon. Woohoo. Ok, thats probably a negative - it took Apple about 5 years to get back to allowing you to do that.

If you are getting a new apple, get one with Leopard (obviously). For older mac's - the choice to upgrade from 10.4 or not?

Not really a must have yet, especially for G4 users.

I'll be installing on my PBook G4 next, so I can compare. More updates on that once thats done.
(The PBook is getting a full makeover though - full install as opposed to upgrade)

I'm a bit ambivalent after using it for 2 days. Leopard is certainly nothing revolutionary to the end user with the exception of Time Machine which will definitely be a great thing to the average user that never backs up. For a developer its added some nice stuff (dtrace). I like spaces, however, I dislike some of the annoying spaces bugs.

I wonder if you are confused about stacks? You can drag any folder onto the dock (just as you could before) and then they'll open up as either a curved list if there are few items in the folder, or otherwise as a translucent window. In either case stacks are not exactly a big deal either.

The lack of hangs in the finder are great. The automatic detection of network shares is also much better than before.

I'm stuck on Vista at work...so I'd be happy with OX8!

Will leave Leopard alone for a while yet.

Leopard is generally a superbly polished version of Tiger, with some new tweaks and features. And I mean that as a good thing, coz more often than not, things that look good don't work so well *coughvistacough*.

I actually waited for Leopard release to switch over to Mac as my main OS, have been using Win XP on my MBP for the few months that I've gotten it.

Say, is there a 3rd party chinese IME that's better than the built in one ? Coz the built in one kinda sucks... I guess i'm too spoilt by google's fantastic IME.

Im using leopard at the moment, i am totally new to mac, can someone help me?
if iwant to delete programmes, should i just drag it to the trash bin or should i do something else?

also how do i change volume, gaaaaah can i delete the msn file for mac that i i just downloaded, because it looks ugly on my desktop or it wont work?

Try QIM

I agree, the built in one sucks. I'm installing on the G4 now, thats taking about 2 hours, so I guess Leopard is *really* optimized for intel, given the amazing 15 minute install I had on the iMac.

Installing on the Powerbook is a pain in the ass, as i had to try 3 different usb cases, then gave up and opened up the firewire case so i could have something to boot from.

In other good news, my 5 x 500g drives arrived, so I can now setup my office raid array and give myself a whack more space for "files" (all work related of course).

@Sienna

Just drag the application to the trash.

To install applications, open up the dmg file they usually come in, then drag the program to the applications folder.

Tip - you can show the applications folder by clicking the lozenge on the top right.

MSN sucks. Use Adium.
Volume should be on top right, look for the speaker icon in the toolbar at the top. Click that, then change the volume level.

thanks, please check your pm inbox

press the Fn key and the F4/F5 key on your keyboard to turn volume up/down too. That's what I do. Or with the apple remote.

How are you hosting the raid enclosure? Apparently time machine doesn't work anymore unless the disks are AFS (I read that the .com.apple.timemachine.supported fix/hack doesn't work with the Leopard retail version of time machine).

And how are you going to back that puppy up!?

For iTunes, you probably have it sorted by artist or album and thus can't move things up and down. Click the white space on the really left with no text and you should be able to order things. I think the iTunes interface is pretty logical, and apparently Apple did too, and they redesigned the Finder based on iTunes.

<gripe>For iTunes, I probably can't be bothered, as the interface isn't one I like, and its top heavy. It also doesn't play much video, even with Perian installed, which makes front row essentially useless.

I could mess around to get things working, but its supposed to work out of the box.
</end gripe>

Raid - I haven't decided yet, I've been looking at the Infrant NV+, or possibly a Thecus device.

They all run some form of linux underneath - the Infrant uses Debian, so I should be able to add AFS+ support to them.

Looks like there already is some kind of support -

http://www.infrant.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13829

Although in the teething stages.

To be honest, most of the important data in the office is backed up across multiple machines.

a->b ->c ->d

I use rsync for that, and I have 2 debian boxes which do backups.
Thats mostly for customer data - mysql and web sites though, although I do include the office day to day stuff in there to.

I have noticed one issue since installing leopard - I can't open stuff directly in Outlook anymore on Parallels, I have to save it first. I'll see if a reinstall will fix that, or if Parallels will come up with a patch. Its a minor annoyance though.

The PBook G4 finished installing - despite the radically increased install time over the iMac (15min vs 1 1/2 hrs) the run speed is decent enough.

I've put 2G ram into it, so it should feel usable

I've found that Expose doesn't work properly for Office Mac 2008, when you mouseover the application it doesn't get highlighted and show the title label. Most likely a Microsoft issue though.

Hi, i live near xujiahui and have looked all over for leopord ( a legit version). I've found knock off versions but dont really like that.

I've tried bestbuy but no luck.

does anyone have an idea?

thanks a lot in advance

J

I can order if you want one.

I'd rather get something in a box, as I can demo it to clients.

Lots of Small Businesses are in need of something like that, as opposed to a server solution.
I've looked at FreeNAS and other stuff in the past, but its not my cup of tea.

I just did a raid data recovery for a friends server. Not fun, I got all the data back, but it was a hassle and a half. Tip - *Never* use LVM over RAID. Not sure what the frack the chinese guy he got to install it a couple of years ago was thinking.

This is a little off topic though.



----

On topic -

Parallels is still crapping out on me, even with their latest beta, and now I can't access samba shares from OS X.
That might be related to downloading and installing a newer MacFUSE from Google, I haven't really investigated yet. It is unix underneath though, so I have lots of logs to look at should I wish.

Other than that, seems to be running quite nicely.


Lawrence.

how much is it? When can you get it? thanks

sienna wrote:Im using leopard at the moment, i am totally new to mac, can someone help me?
if iwant to delete programmes, should i just drag it to the trash bin or should i do something else?

You can also hold command/apple and click delete. Easier for large numbers of files. You still have to empty the trash can though either way.

Where can i buy OS x Leopord in shanghai?

thanks

-J

@jarmanje
I PM'd you with the price already.

Where can i buy it from a store though? I'm not sure i want to pay 1600 for it... or where is your store so i can come and check it out?

@jarmanje
I PM'd you with the price already.

I have mine in the office. Box is very cool, with a 3d hologram purple cosmos in the front.

In this blog I’ve highlighted a number of Vista related bugs, some of which are trivial, others pretty serious, but today I’ve come across a bug in Leopard that beats anything Microsoft has to offer in Vista hands down - this bug is serious because it causes widespread data loss, and it’s easy to replicate.

The issue has been covered in detail over on Tom Karpik’s blog. Here’s the lowdown on this bug:

Leopard’s Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in action. I first came across it when Samba crashed while I was moving a directory from my desktop over to a Samba mount on my FreeBSD server.

So, you use Finder to pick a folder to move to a different volume and start the moving process. If however, something happens to cause that volume to go offline during the move process then your original copy of the data in the folder that you were moving is deleted as though the move process was completed successfully. Bye-bye data. Any files not moved to the destination volume are lost. I’m guessing that the OS assumes that the move operation has completed correctly and cleans up after itself, unwittingly deleting files that haven’t been moved.

This is the sort of bug that’ll make you appreciate that you took the time to become acquainted with Time Machine.

I’ve replicated this bug on my install of Leopard following Karpik’s instructions and the problem seems to occur every time without fail. This bug would make me vary wary of moving data across a wireless network to a remote system - an interruption to the WiFi connection could nuke your data.

I’m hoping to take a closer look at the file system tomorrow to see if the files are still hidden there somewhere - maybe in a temp file or something. I also want to examine other circumstances when this error could kick in - for example, does this happens when moving between the file system and USB flash drives?

I’m seriously beginning to wonder if anyone beta tested this OS.



Interesting. Looks like it's not only microsoft that releases OS' with problems.

Not that its a good thing but this bug isn't new. Its been reported in Tiger too.

wow. And they still havent corrected it?

Did they charge any money for this Leopard thing or is it free like Linux?

Interesting, because it doesn't do that in my copy of Leopard.

It stops and says it can't complete because the volume is offline (or something similar like that). I don't see data loss.

Incidentally I get the same issues in XP copying files, so it might be a Samba thing, rather than a Leopard thing.

(I've had copies die over wireless, and the file hasn't transferred completely, but xp says it has...)

That said its still a bug, albeit not something your average person is likely to see, or care about, as it only affects a small subset of users with specific setups.

A couple of shops in the electronics mall in Xu Jia Hui (near the big dome) have both copy and authentic versions of Leopard. They were asking about 300 RMB for the copy, 1500 for the 'real' copy. Does anyone have any experience with those? Does the copy version work?

I downloaded a copy and it worked. ONly problem was a dual layer disc was needed and I didn't have one, so I had to put it on my video ipod and boot from that.