Now that’s it all properly installed on my mac-mini I feel that it’s time for a blog post.
Friday: Leopard Launch Day
I arrived at the Southampton Apple store at about 3pm and joined the queue as soon as it was set up. And I have to say that the queue was a really great social atmosphere and that everyone there was really friendly and I must thank great high wolf from macrumors forums for doing a drinks run. Also, it was really cool that the Apple store employees handed out chocolates and water- it certainly makes a change from many companies launch night arrangements. (I’m looking at you Sony)
Saturday: MacLiveExpo
Due to several thousand football fans and a line closure it took well over an hour and a half on the tubes (mostly packed) to reach the expo. There was some interesting loot to be picked up, namely some nice juggling balls from Konica Minolta- now if everyone did that I wouldn’t have been able to get home due to a vast surplus of said juggling balls. 
There was an interesting showing of Leopard by Apple, which would have been more interesting if I’d seen it prior to launch- but my fears that Time Machine would need a dedicated drive were put to rest. It only needs free space on a not-booted HFS+ journaled disk. There were some very good hardware deals going on at the show, and if you can pick up the early bird free tickets and get a reasonably direct train then it’s probably a good idea to buy a mac there. Unless you’re taking the tube, then it would be buying a mac for a random stranger on your train.
As for Leopard itself; the new dock (the non-3d one that is) is shiny and Mail is a lot more responsive and powerful, and is now no longer embarrassing to search for emails with.
So whats Leopard like? I’ve been skeptical of it the entire time, It’s never really bothered me, what do you think?
I’ve already upgraded my Macbook to Leopard and so far it’s working very well. The upgrade went easily and the tools are pretty cool. The ones I liked most are the new Finder that imports the Cover Flow function from iTunes and the new iChat which allows the insertion of images and films. If you haven’t upgraded yet, there are some interesting videos I’ve found that show Leopard’s new tools and effects:
http://www.weshow.com/us/p/20050/mac_os_x_leopard_ichat
http://www.weshow.com/us/p/20048/mac_os_x_leopard_finder
http://www.weshow.com/us/p/20052/mac_os_x_leopard_mail
Well, I’ve upgraded and the main thing I’m liking is time machine and the general performance tweaks. Nothing like a new OSX to squeeze more out of old hardware. (Try saying that about Windows
)
Or you could just buy a windows pc and save all the hassle!