So far, I have only installed Leopard on my PowerBook G4, and not on my Intel Core 2 Duo iMac. I’m doing it for a couple of reasons, but mostly so as to try it out while still maintaining a backup. The PowerBook, being pre-Intel, provides a “worst-case” setup, where if something can go wrong, it probably will.

So far, I have had a few problems. In fact, at first, I thought that the setup was completely buggy–I kept getting interminable spinning-beachball cursors and system hangs. Then I discovered the problem: I had set up and started using Time Machine on a newly-purchased Buffalo external HDD. For some reason, this was causing most of the problems. Once I stopped it, everything started working fine. I am not sure why, however. It might have been the indexing, which was taking forever. It might have been the slower G4 processor. It might have been the Buffalo drive (which I had carefully reformatted as HFS+, having done my homework). Or it might have been Leopard itself; people have complained about Time Machine, and this might simply be one of those early-adopter problems.

Once I turned off Time Machine, I stopped getting beachballs and hangs, but I had a small other problem: I could not mount the external drive any more. Which was problematic, because I did a clean install of Leopard, and all my saved files were on the external drive. My iMac could mount it just fine, and on the Leopard Mac, using Disk Utility, I could see the drive but not mount the volume. I was considering alternate ways of transferring the data, like doing it from the iMac over the WiFi network (too slow) or transferring files to my other external drives and then from them to the PowerBook–when, all by itself, the volume mounted suddenly (after having been plugged in for some time). That gave me enough of a window to load the files I needed.

Doing the clean install is not so much of a pain as it often seems. Yes, you have to re-install all your apps and get your passwords and preferences just right. But installing apps is not so bad, and if you know where the vital preference files are, that becomes a snap as well. I just copied the Mac Keychain files and imported them into the new keychain, and bam, all my passwords filled in automatically again. Similarly, browser bookmarks can be easily restored. It didn’t take long to get things back to normal.

I am also trying out a switch: from Eudora to Apple’s Mail app. An app called Eudora Mailbox Cleaner works quite well, except that a few of my mailboxes seemed damaged and caused the migration to crash. I figured out that by creating a new mailbox, transferring the messages, and then deleting the buggy old mailbox, everything went smoothly. Eudora Mailbox Cleaner also migrates your addresses and filters.

This email client switch is another reason to install Leopard on one computer and no the other: to allow me to gauge the differences between the two without committing fully to either one. Depending on which I decide to use, I will simply delete the other one and transfer the files from the one I’ll use to the other computer, and I’ll be in sync.

Already, I am having doubts about Mail, but I have to discount how much of that is simply familiarity with Eudora. Eudora has a kick-ass search feature; Mail’s doesn’t measure up, but might be serviceable, once I figure out all the features. I am also not sure about the spam filter, but Mail’s filter improves over time, so I have to give it a chance. Eudora has more flexibility and easier settings, but it’s also stuck in 1997. Mail has a new To Do list I will likely use, and when emails come with dates and times, you can add them easily to iCal. I will use that a lot, but already see problems; my boss, for example, likes to write the dates and times for meetings on separate lines and with differing forms; Mail can read across lines, but the forms confuse it. See the example below, where Mail did not read the start time accurately, instead starting the appointment at the end time, and ending an hour later. So it’s not perfect… but close enough to be useful. You just need to edit a bit. For me, the big thing is making it easier to add a calendar entry when I am notified in email, so that I’ll remember to do it in the first place.

That’s the extent of my suffering. Everything else has been very enjoyable, with lots of features grabbing my attention unexpectedly. For example, Leopard’s new sidebar includes pre-set Smart Folders, folders that search by various criteria. One that I can definitely see myself using are the “Today,” “Yesterday,” and “Past Week” folders. The Shared volumes are not bad, either.

In the past, Apple has advertised “hundreds of features,” but with Leopard, a lot more of them are noticeably useful and/or eye-catching.

A big feature that I thought would be good and can see is even better than I expected: Quick Look. Just select any file and hit the space bar, and you get a preview of what’s inside. Read text, run through slide shows, watch movies, play sounds–without waiting for an application to open, or having to quit it once you’re through. With the QuickLook window open, you can use the arrow keys to continue to browse files, each one coming up in the QuickLook window as you select it. Movies can be played full-screen, too. Very nice.

Then there are stacks. I didn’t think that I would use this as much as I am, but I discovered that you can use the stacks to organize your apps. Just put any app into a folder (or make Aliases of them and put them in a folder), then drop the folder into the right side of the Dock. It becomes a stack with all of those apps in them. This is great for me as my Dock was getting too crowded; instead I now have stacks for “Office Suites” (iWork, MS Office, other text-editing stuff), “Movies” (various media players and video encoders), Image Editing, Apple apps, and whatever other category of apps I decide on. This frees up considerable dock space and makes it still easy to open the apps.

The downsides: Dragging-and-dropping documents onto apps in stacks is less-than-satisfying. You can’t do it directly, instead you have to wait for the folder to open in the Finder and then drop it onto that. Which is why my most-often-used apps remain in the app area of the dock. Also, the stacks sort alphabetically; if you want any app in a certain place in the list, you have to rename it. Not hard with aliases, but it look a bit funny. I’ll have to see how all of this wears over time.

Spaces seems cool, but I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. I think I could get used to it, but it will take practice.

Safari is nice, with the highlighted search and movable tabs–but I will suffer a lot until auxiliary apps like PithHelmet get upgraded. I absolutely detest Flash ads. I dislike most web page ads, in fact, but ones that move hold a special dark corner of loathing in my soul. Hopefully I won’t have to put up with that much longer–and another good reason to hold off on putting Leopard on my iMac, where I do most of my browsing.

Other than that, all of my apps work smoothly; aside from the Input-Manager-driven Safari add-ons, everything seems to work fine. Yes, Classic is broken, but I need to try out SheepShaver with Mac OS 8.5, to see if I can get it working with sound and everything.

And finally, Leopard is probably going to drive me to do something I have resisted for quite some time: get a DotMac account. Syncing my computers, Back to My Mac, iLife ’08 enhancements–there’s too much for me to keep resisting the hundred-buck-a-year toll on all that. I don’t like it, mind you, but I will at last acknowledge that there’s enough in there to appeal to me now. Of course, I’ll try out the 60-day free trial first….

More on Leopard as I try it out more.