I am finally a Leopard user!

I had been holding off pending the release of what I’d hoped would be a final release of my contact manager (Daylite from Marketcircle). Unfortunately, I was faced with waiting until mid-January (the next time I’d have the time to do something like this) or use a third-beta release. I chose the beta release. :^)

I also relied on the fact that we have several new people starting work at Zope Corporation in the near future. We’ve all but standardized on MacBook Pros. Since these new folks start in January we had some extras laying around waiting for their users.

I had an incredible “itch” to have a clean install. First, I had a 200GB 7200 rpm drive (an upgrade from the 160GB 5400 rpm drive I had) that needed to get into my machine. Second, I had been experiencing some “weirdness” with Sync Services (constant complaining about a machine that I’ve not had for a long time). Third, I’d downloaded and installed a number of applications that I ended up never using. /Applications and ~/Library directories contained lots of bones from these experiments.

Last (but not least), I’d used the Apple Migration Assistant in the past to go from Panther to Tiger on a Powerbook and again to go from that Powerbook to my current MBP. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I missed the opportunity to have a proper spring cleaning and fresh OS install.

I made a clean install on the borrowed MBP, ensured I had the latest releases of the software I use, and generally “moved in.” Only after I was comfortable in my new (and temporary) digs did I look back at my “old” MBP. After copying /Users/rob to the new MBP (and making another backup on a firewire drive), I made another clean Tiger install on my “old” MBP. Then, finally, I used the Apple Migration Assistant again to move all of my now-tidy configurations from the borrowed MBP to my old MBP.

I want to take a moment to thank Apple for not hassling its users with incessant serial numbers, registration keys and the like. This process was smooth and hassle free!

I’ve been with Leopard for almost a week. Daylite is still not in final release for Leopard :^( but everything seems to be working well. The UI is very nice (nicer than Tiger, imo). I think I like Time Machine – I know I like the idea of it, to date it hasn’t been intrusive. It’s real test will come when I have an uncontrived reason to restore something. I’ll keep my fingers crossed until then.

My one complaint is that the keyboard sharing app I use (OSX2VNC) crashes on Leopard. I’m looking for an upgrade or a replacement.