by Last Friday, the Snow Leopard upgrade for the Mac OS arrived and I threw down my pencils and paper and started a family-style install across all our computers. This is our story. This is our review.
Snow Leopard is an okay upgrade.
Installation took 45 minutes or so for each machine.
Display colors appear brighter and richer.
Speed in loading programs is improved.
Everything feels snappier.
Here’s what we didn’t like:
Snow Leopard killed all our printer drivers. We had to delete our old printer driver and install a new one. The new printer driver does print faster, but we would’ve liked some sort of warning that our printers would go missing after the upgrade.
Snapz Pro X is our favorite screenshot grabber and it did not like the upgrade. It refused to work. It de-registered itself on all our machines. We had to re-install and get all new activation codes. Not fun. Not a seamless upgrade in any way.
Our AT&T GlobeTrotter Connect Software for our USB Quicksilver modem does not work with Snow Leopard and, of course, because this is AT&T, there is no update for the software and there’s no ETA on if or when updated drivers will be available. Major, total, regressive, BUMMER!
We’ve noticed a disconcerting and disappointing loss of one of our dual two-terabyte external LaCie Big Disk Extremes every time our new MacBook wakes up from sleep. This is a new, and not appreciated, behavior after upgrading to Snow Leopard. We don’t like it when upgrades break good things. Our workaround is to turn off the drive and turn it on again or, if that doesn’t work, reboot the entire system. Big UGH!
The Trash now takes four times longer to empty than it used to and we don’t like waiting for the return of system functionality. Now, under Snow Leopard, when the trash empties, it’s as if we’re all stuck in a time warp waiting for the process to finish as our entire system becomes lagging and fuzzy. Let’s don’t do the Time Warp again!
Overall, Snow Leopard appears to be a so-so upgrade, but the new problems the upgrade caused has given us all pause to wonder if the Snow Leopard upgrade was all really worth it or not.
I’m not sure if I should get it. I can’t help but wonder what the powers that be at Cupertino might say come next upgrade if you didn’t get this one – “full price for you!” ?
Oh, I’d go for the upgrade, Gordon. The price is incredibly cheap and any annoying flaws will likely be sorted out in a software update.
I’m sold! 🙂 Thanks, David.
I find it curious that Amazon is selling it for less than Apple.
Yay, Gordon! Be sure to report back!
I ordered mine from Apple because they were offering free FedEx shipping — that made it a better and cheaper deal than Amazon for me… even with my Prime Membership.
Solve the issue with the trash!
Yes, the slow trash emptying is just silly! How could they not test that? Does nobody use beta software as their everyday OS any longer? There’s always trash to empty when you’re working throughout the day and the first time you’d empty, you’d see, feel, and taste the abhorrent slowness!
Ahem….. Before the torches and pitchforks come out – its just a finder preferences issue. Snow Leopard defaulted your trash cleanup to a “secure” delete, which takes longer but deletes according to an accepted standard for this. Just go under “Finder” and click on “Preferences”, go to the “Advanced” tab and uncheck the “Empty Trash securely”. Presto – your old quick dump is back.
This has happened on one or two other versions of OSX in the past.
Now go pet your new MAC kitty and say your sorry……
Thanks for the comment and you raise an important point that should be addressed.
I’ve always used secure empty — what’s the point of trashing something if it’s still there — and secure delete was never this slow as it is under Snow Leopard.
I have an SSD drive on my MacBook Uni — and everything begins to crawl when the trash is emptied.
I don’t want to have to turn off secure empty to get my speed back the way it was on 10.5.6 with secure empty.