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I got my copy of OS X Leopard this morning, along with many other folks. While the official launch isn’t until 6pm tonight, who wants to wait until then? Right now, I have two Mac’s that will get this new OS install.Machine 1

iMac Core 2 Duo3Gb of ram250GB HD

Machine 2

Powerbook 12? 867Mhz1.12GB of ram100GB (5400RPM) HD

I fully expect the iMac to handle this new 64bit OS quite well. This is the type of machine Leopard is targeted for. The real question for me is, how will it run on a machine that has the absolute bottom of the line processor requirement? The powerbook was definitely first on the list for an install. I backed up all the data on the laptop, and immediately booted off the Leopard DVD to start the install. After customizing the install by de-selecting the other language translations (English is good enough for me), I started the install. I went with a clean install, as I have never been a fan of OS “upgrades”.

Historically, upgrades mean weird problems (usually on Windows systems, but I am guessing some similar quirks might exist on a Mac upgrade).

The install was completely automatic. It took roughly forty five minutes to complete the install, which was really surprising, as Apple estimates one to two hours, and after all, this machine has the slowest acceptable processor.Upon completion, I registered the machine with my .Mac account, and created a user. I then started playing around with different menus, and noticed that while the machine worked fine, it seemed slightly slower than Tiger did on this same machine. It didn’t take too long for me to notice the blinking dot in the middle of the spotlight icon.Then it clicked, Spotlight is doing its indexing work. I clicked the icon, and it told me it had twenty two minutes left. In the mean time, I continued my personalization. I adjusted my .Mac settings to sync everything automatically, and then clicked “Sync Now”, to get all my settings loaded on this machine.It took a few minutes, but once complete, things worked as expected, with one exception. When I opened Mail.app, my .Mac account settings hadn’t all synced. I ended up having to remove the account from the app, and then re-running the .Mac sync. The second time around, things worked well with email.I then decided to try and run a software update on the new machine, just in case they had some update already. It wouldn’t connect, and gave me an error about connecting to the update server. I tried again about fives minutes later, with the same issue. I gave up on doing that for a while. I assumed they were getting a lot of hits today. After waiting about an hour, I tried again, and it worked. There was a single update to Apple Remote Desktop client.By this point, the Spotlight process had completed, and the hard drive stopped working so hard. The machine was all of the sudden a lot more responsive, whew. I then decided to unplug, and run on batteries while I surfed the web, wrote some email, and used Grab to get the screenshots for this article. I then also opened Preview, so I could crop the images to include only what I wanted. Withall these apps open, the machine started to get a little sluggish. This wasn’t new to me, as the same issue existed when using Tiger, I guess I was just hoping it would somehow be faster.One thing I have noticed is that the machine is not any snappier than it was with Tiger. It’s essentially about the same performance. I have readsome other reviews, where people with newerhardware are seeing a much snappier response with Leopard. I guess I’ll find out for sure when I load the iMac. I must say, I am impressed that the machine responds this well with such a new OS. This laptop is many generations old. I know the additional ram helps it alot, especially when I get multiple apps going, but I half expected for it to be pretty slow going in general. Good job Apple.This machine is primarily used for Mail, Web, writing on my blog, etc. Apps related to these specific tasks are my real focus. I am extremely impressed with the new Mail app. The data detectors, the quick look, rss, and notes/tasks are all welcome improvements. Data detection is just sweet, about time someone did this. Most notably, the application is a lot faster. I liked the previous Mail app, but always wondered why it wasn’t snappier. Safari 3 is also a nice improvement in performance. I haven’t really noticed any other major things with it.On top of those application improvements, I am really pleased with the visual consistency in windows, applications, menus, etc. Frankly, I expected this sort of clean up in Tiger, so it’s about time they streamlined the appearance.So far, my verdict is thumbs up for Leopard on this old machine. I’m glad, because I really wanted features like quick look, back to my Mac, and the data detection in Mail. I’ll post more when I get it loaded on the iMac.