Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 127
 A Faster, Lighter, Smoother Leopard September 2, 2009
Alan (United Kingdom)
90 out of 92 found this review helpful
I installed Snow Leopard (aka Mac OS X 10.6.0) on Sunday 30th August 2009 just 2 days after it was released, on my 3-year-old iMac. My iMac isn't particuarly powerful; it only has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive. Snow Leopard was extremely easy to install, with few options or technical decisions to make, and took just 45 minutes to complete. I upgraded straight from Leopard and didn't have to re-format my hard drive or start over from scratch. I encountered no problems or bugs during the process and, when I got back to my Desktop, all my files and settings were completely intact.
In short, my iMac is now much faster. That's the main difference. Snow Leopard may look the same as Leopard on the surface, but "under the hood" it has been completely re-engineered and refined. From my experience, it seems like I'm running the same operating system (Leopard) but on newer, more powerful hardware. My iMac now starts up in 35 seconds and shuts down in 6 seconds. And it goes to sleep so quickly you'd think the computer had crashed! The Finder feels lighter and more fluid, with smoother scrolling and faster loading of icons. The Dashboard loads and updates more quickly, with less time spent waiting for Widgets to refresh their content from the Internet. Mail also feels lighter and more responsive, totally at ease with browsing through thousands of rich text e-mails.
Snow Leopard appears to be identical to Leopard, but it isn't. There are lots of new features and improvements to be found if you look closely enough. For example, Preview now allows you to import from a scanner, over Wi-Fi. This "just works" totally automatically, and requires no installation of third-party bloatware or complex configuration. Expose has been re-designed, presumably in response to Windows 7 copying Apple's dock (introduced in 2000), with left-click dock activation, a more organised grid layout, and the ability to minimise windows down into their parent application's icon. QuickTime Player is totally different and now allows you to record your own screen in high definition, and upload it directly to YouTube. Date & Time in System Preferences now sets your time zone automatically, by triangulating nearby Wi-Fi hotspots to determine your closest city. And one of the most useful features, automatic spelling correction is now system-wide, meaning your mistakes are corrected no matter where you type!
So is Snow Leopard worth £23.99? Absolutely, it's fantastic value at just a third of the cost of Windows 7. It makes your Mac run much faster and it fixes most of Leopard's little quirks and imperfections. I'm genuinely impressed. However, if you're not a geek, I'd advise you to wait a month or two before upgrading. Upgrading to a brand new operating system, just days after its release, is risky business and potentially counterproductive. Many third-party apps aren't yet ready for Snow Leopard, because developers weren't expecting it to come out until the end of September! So check the websites of your favourite apps for updates first, and perhaps wait for Apple to release 10.6.1 or even 10.6.2, before taking the plunge.
Works on Tiger September 6, 2009
M. Nash (UK)
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
Good news to anyone who still has Tiger, Snow Leopard can be directly installed... unless you want to buy iLife and iWork '09, this is a cheap fantastic upgrade. However, for it to work properly, you will have to back up all of your documents, photos, and applications if needed, then transfer them back. Worth the time & effort!
Fantasic Upgrade to Leopard (10.5) August 28, 2009
Daniel Probert (London, UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Well, it's more of a makeover of Leopard than a full upgrade, but then Windows 7 is more of a makeover of Windows Vista than a true upgrade as well (IMHO).
This is a short review - the other two poor reviews were about Amazon's customer service, not about the Snow Leopard product, so I just thought I'd actually write something positive about the actual product.
Installation took about 40 mins on my old (white) MacBook.
Only thing I've found with Snow Leopard so far is that it disabled my Parallels 3.0 software - which simply means it's time to upgrade to Parallels 4.0.
Other than that, everything just works. Very happy with it.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard v. 10.6 (Mac DVD) December 22, 2009
Mr. D. G. DRENNAN (Bristol, UK)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is the upgrade edition of Mac OS X and it successfully updated my Mac OS X Tiger to Snow Leopard and bi-passed Leopard entirely. I had heard that this was possible thanks to a couple of posts on Mac forums and was pleased to see for myself that this upgrade disc does upgrade to the latest edition of OS X from Tiger. Save yourself £££ off the cost of full edition.
Well worth the money September 3, 2009
N. EVERITT (Essex)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Snow Leopard is an evolutionary release that builds upon Leopard. It incorporates a lot of new technologies under the hood that allow Mac OS X to take advantage of GPGPU (using the graphics processor in everyday applications), and tools such as GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) that allow developers to take advantage of the multiple cores found in modern Mac systems. The kernel and all standard applications within OS X have also been recompiled as 64 bit on Macs that support it, so that they can perform more efficiently and take advantage of massive amounts of RAM.
It also features a lot of speed improvements (especially boot up and shutdown, install time, as well as general system speed). There aren't a lot of new end user features (QuickTime X is all I can think of), but Apple has taken a lot of time to refine the current features, productivity enhancements to the Dock (Dock Expose) and the Finder, and hundreds of small tweaks across the system that make little difference by themselves, but when grouped together make OS X that more enjoyable to use.
And at £23 I can think of no reason not to buy this.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 127
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