Will this help?
or straight from here:
I just did an upgrade install the Saturday or Sunday after the release day. No archive. Install was flawless. Finally rearranged my external drive location so that I have Time Machine up and running. Backed up my XP boxes over the network to the ext. drive attached to the MacBook. Then I proceeded to back all that up to Mozy.com online. I now have three copies of everything important.
I have had no significant problems with Leopard. I am printing to my Lexmark printer attached to a Windoze box over my wireless network (NetGear wireless router). I love stacks, especially the download folder. My desktop is cleaner than ever.
So far my fave feature is QuickLook - click a file, hit space bar, voila - THEN, while the quicklook window is open, just click on another file and its preview will show up in the existing window. Genius.
TimeMachine is cool visually - hope I never need to use it though
So, you upgraded to Leopard as a new adopter.
MMMmmm!
Here’s an interesting, substantiated, view on Leopard.
pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2223921,00.asp
Snort
He’s just strident for hits.
Leopard’s great. It has problems, yes, but overall I find the hysteric reports of having to go back to Tiger in order to be able to work rather . . . hysteric.
And what’s with this insane bloviation all 'round the net over the dock? Works fine. Don’t notice it.
Time Machine? I can think of 20 people who will backup their systems now because it’s so easy. (Which is its target population is it not?)
It’s worth the upgrade price.
Dave
I don’t know that ‘substantiated’ is really an appropriate word for that trolling piece. He doesn’t know what Stacks are called, doesn’t know about using Time Machine over a network, doesn’t seem to understand the substantial differences between Shadow Copy and Time Machine, and apparently doesn’t know about the (heavily advertised) spacebar QuickLook shortcut.
It’s a shame, because he makes a few good (if unoriginal) points - the dropping Windows shares, the blue indicator lights in the dock, and lack of block-level backup in Time Machine. But they’re drowned in a sea of rubbish that damages the credibility of the whole article.
I couldn’t get beyond the first few paragraphs. If he has that sort of trouble he should look at his set-up. Makes me wonder about how he sets about doing upgrades.
I installed Leopard last weekend (1st version MBP 17") … backed up everything and did a clean install, re-installed the software I use all the time …
So far I’ve only had zero problems, it boots much faster, apps open up faster. I haven’t yet set up Time Machine or reinstalled Synchronize! Pro X to do the back-ups because I have to sort out my external drives. I need to keep a bootable one with Tiger on as I only have the original CS suite, and it seems that won’t run well under Leopard and I use In Design a fair bit. So I need to move data around so I can have a bootable disk with Tiger on it and those apps and another bootable back-up of the main hard disk.
But I’m sure backing up will continue to be a cinch!
Mark
Gaijin de Moscu: Thanks for the link. I’ve thought about adding a ‘perma-icon’ that’s always on top to my Stacks, and while it works, I just wish there was a more elegant solution - but it’s better than nothing.
david_b: Thanks - Oldfolder works pretty well.
I also solved one of my own problems, in case anyone’s interested. There were certain folders I wanted in the Dock that I didn’t want to be stacks - I just wanted them to open the folder in the Finder. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier, but the workaround is to put an alias of the folder in the Dock instead of the folder itself. Then it opens the folder in the Finder instead of as a Stack.
As for that foaming-at the-mouth ‘review,’ I really have to agree with xiamenese. I haven’t had a single crash since updating. He must be doing something seriously wrong to be having that much trouble. I’d have to chalk most of his problems up to the famous ‘PEBKAC’ error - ‘Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.’
I didn’t read the review, but anything from a place called ‘pcmag’ is probably going to have a vested interest in Leopard not being presented well, imo.
One reason I didn’t read it is that my experience has been what the others have said - uncrashing and painless. Like Khadrelt, I have a few nits - mine are different, though - but I love the new features, especially Time Machine and QuickLook. (I think I mentioned that before. 
)
To be honest, for me Leopard does what an OS should do: become invisible most of the time while I do other things it allows me to do. When I do need its features - TM, QL, Stacks with downloads - it’s right there for me. (Though, fortunately, I don’t need TM very often.)
(One of my nits had an easy solution: the printer driver was staying open after a print job, where in Tiger, it closed after it was done. By right-clicking (or ctl-clicking) on the printer icon in the Dock, then choosing “Auto-Quit”, the old Tiger behavior returns. )
Edited to add:
MacUser’s take on the pcmag article
When I first bought Leopard and tried to install it on a month old MacBookPro, it crashed my hard drive and Apple replaced it and installed Leopard for me.
BUT, what I most like about Leopard and I have no logical explanation for is…all the data and programs and my iTunes library takes up 10 GB LESS space on my Leopard equipped MBP than it did on the same MBP running Tiger. Hard drive space is always a concern for me. Go figure?
Strange, that wasn’t the case for me. Leopard used more disk space with Leopard than with Tiger. Maybe your old hard drive had bad sectors or something so you couldn’t access the whole disk?
Perhaps it’s a difference between a Clean Install and an Archive and Install? I did the latter and it did indeed take up more room on my hard drive.
My two cents
(1) For older machines (I have a G5 1.6) The speed increase and stability is much better than tiger. Breathes life into some older machines.
(2) Quick Look. Nice feature browsing inside some documents without having to open the parent application. Probably one of the best features.
(3) A chosen direction in the GUI instead of having multiple variations as found in tiger.
(4) SPACES. There are still a few bugs in spaces but for a user who has to use multiple applications at once in a working environment this is a big time saver. The benefits are not so noticed for “single application” users.
(5) Much needed fixes in SPOTLIGHT especially when searching Networked drives. The problems that plagued spotlight where a huge problem and Leopard is addressing those using better methods. I still recommend EasyFind but spotlight is maturing.
(6) Auto Activation ability in FontBook. Can be handy for those not using 3rd party font management systems but use FontBook to manage Font Sets for speed increases in the system.
(7) Much better interface and control features in the Sharing preference pane. IF you are using file sharing a lot this is a BIG plus.
(8) Better Sidebar in windows with more features such as saved searches etc…
(9) Better 64 bit implementation.
(10) Stacks is mainly eye candy. The new dock is the same. eye candy.
(11) Time Machine is nice for Users who are NOT tech savvy. Very user friendly, easy setup and use. Drawback is having another drive. I say install a secondary internal drive if you are on a “tower” machine or a dedicated firewire drive for other machines. THen just leave the drive plugged in for “back Up”.
I have noticed that if you are doing something like rendering, encoding large files, etc. that you should TURN OFF time machine becuase if it kicks in while doing such a CPU laborious task the machine will take much longer. Time machine is really usefull for a user who is forgetful or out of habit “loses or damages files”. If you are a careful user and you already do back ups time machine is not so show stopping, not so impressive.
(12) The "self Tuning TCP buffer size is an intersting trick. Some may notice network speed improvements. Other may notice no difference at all.
(13) Much Better Parental Controls. For those with kids this is a plus.
(14) PDF manipulation in PREVIEW. For those that don’t have ACrobat Professional this can come in handy.
(15) Live Partition Resizing in Disk Utility. You may not use this much but when you need it its there and can be real useful.
(16) The ability to unmount 1 partition without unmounting the whole drive and the ability to eject all partitions with one command.
(17) Calculations in Spotlight. No need to open Calculator for a quick math answer.
(18) Scrolling non-active windows. Very handy for multitasking
(19) Multicore optimized and AutoFS are big things “under the hood” that can improve performance for a user.
(20) Print Preview.
There are many more but those are some that stand out to me as good reasons to upgrade.
FWIW -
I find (somewhat to my surprise) that I’m making very little use of new features in Leopard:
- spotlight might be improved but I more often than not search on file names and have got addicted to LaunchBar in the meantime
- the Coverflow view looks fun but I work with spreadsheets, word docs, Scriv files, etc., so not much real use where it matters
- I’ve turned on Time Machine, which is nice to know, but I was using online backup anyway
-etc.
The only new feature I’m really benefiting from is Spaces, and even that can be annoying at times - e.g. a notification popping up in another space can make the system switch to that space in front of your eyes.
There are lots of annoying downsides, though
- one of the worst for me is that Powerpoint has become unbelievably unstable - it crashes with no warning whatsoever, just disappears while you’re typing. It even manages to lose the auto-recovery file in the process - I lost an hour or so’s work last week, which was a major headache on a tight deadline. (I do have KeyNote but it’s simply not
- MissingSync for Palm no longer works - I’ll have to pay out for an upgrade I guess
- printer driver hassles
- Call Recorder no longer working with Skype
- etc.
All in all, given my time again I’d wait a few months more yet (but not so bad I’d go to the trouble of downgrading)
I am running PowerPoint under Leopard with no problems. Have you run the latest MicroSoft AutoUpdate? The latest version of PP is 11.3.5. As for Skype, I’m running the latest beta, 2.7.0.195, and have no problems. If you have these updates and are still crashing, you may have 3rd party software that interferes with system processes.
My experience with Leopard is OK, but not earth-shaking. I do agree that speed and stability seem better. I don’t use some of the new features, like Time Machine or Spaces. The Dock 3-D effect I resolved by selecting a new Background picture that is black at the bottom. The best feature for me is QuickLook, just select a file and press the space bar. The biggest flop is Stacks. As I said in this thread (above), you may use 3rd-party fixes to preserve hierarchical folders. I am running Hierarchy to resolve this issue.
A little question at those who are using Leopard already:
I’ve heard that in Leopard’s Finder it’s no longer possible to arrange the icons freely within a folder.
Is this true or myth?
I do this a lot. I have a folder for every project, assign a nice background image and group the files as I feel. This is part of my thinking process, so I wouldn’t want to have to go without it.
Thanks for clarification!
Myth. Where on earth did you hear that? Leopard’s icon arrangement options are exactly the same as in Tiger, with the added bonus of configurable grid spacing.
It might be that the default is now set to arrange, actually, instead of free form? I’m not sure on that, but I kind of recall it being that way when I first installed—and the other way when I first installed Tiger. It’s been a while though!
Thank you very much. I am glad to hear it was a, well, mythunderstanding… 
What you might have been hearing about was that Leopard has changed the way default Finder views work (icon vs. list vs. browser).
Under Tiger, each folder would tend to “stick” with whatever view you’d last looked at it in. So a folder of icons remained icons, a folder in list view remained in list view, whenever you navigated back to it.
Under Leopard, whatever view you’re currently using, every folder you navigate to will tend to switch to that same view, UNLESS you’ve specifically set up an individual folder with a default option in View Options. So if you want your projects folder to always show up in icon view, you have to set it to always open with icon view.
Generally I preferred Tiger’s method, as Leopard feels a bit inconsistent until you gradually set a default on all the folders you regularly navigate to. And I’ve noticed that often Leopard will ignore a folder’s ‘always few’ setting when you click the Back button to navigate back to it. But it’s not, like, a make-or-break, completely unusable change, just a slight annoyance you get used to.