Pages

Sep 4, 2009

The big cat roars in ...


Hello ...
As you may have heard ... Snow Leopard is here ...
Every other blog I read has something to say about it ...
Most of the reviews say Snow leopard is generally good ...
Everyone agrees that its a quick, easy and a cheap upgrade ...
Naturally ... I'm thinking whether I should upgrade ...
So I ran a quick check to see if my MBP will fully support it ...
And yes ... my hardware will support Snow leopard ... somewhat ...
The problem is ... I have a MacBook Pro from late 2006 ...
It has an ATI RadeonX1600 Graphics card ... not Nvidia ...
Meaning I can't get openCL or quicktime hardware acceleration ...
Also ... ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi ...
Returns a "firmware-abi" = <"EFI32"> ... not "EFI64" ...
Which means I cant boot into full 64bit mode ... bummer !!!
Apart from these ... my MBP will run Snow Leopard just fine ...
So you can understand why I'm not all excited here ...
Anyways ... what do you guys think ... should I upgrade ???
Laterx ...

10 comments:

millzero said...

you should update!

admin said...

you think so eh, millzero ...
BTW ... have you upgraded yet ...???

haleem said...

cant wait to test this cat

admin said...

yes ...
test this and write a god review ...
how are you liking your new 13" unibody ... ???
sounds like you like it a lot ... hehe ...

andhu said...

snow leopard will be faster on your existing hardware as well. Buy it.

admin said...

yes andhu ...
they say it will be faster ... but not much ...
but yeah ... i'm leaning towards upgrading too ...
hehe ...

BlogD said...

I would say no, unless there are specific features (such as the text auto-replace or the improved Stacks and Expose) that you really need. While Snow Leopard delivers a speed boost, it is minimal unless you use software specifically designed to take advantage of the new features (especial the dual core CPUs and GPU burden-sharing). In the meantime, version-0 bugs and hiccups might do stuff like cause printing problems or stall out certain services (I lost MobileMe on one of my Macs, for example--am still working out how to get it back). I installed SL on my late-2008 MBP and my 2006 Dual-core iMac. While I can see improvements, they are marginal. I mainly upgraded because I like the new bells and whistles and for the future--I was not really going for an immediate speed bump.

If, in the next 6-8 months, you get versions of software which are Snow-Leopard-optimized and Apple has come out with 10.6.2 or 10.6.3 by that time, then might be best.

But in the meantime, if your machine is borderline, I would say take a wait-and-see attitude. This from an Apple stockholder....

admin said...

BlogD ::
thats a lot of advice ... thanks ...
closing the amazon.com browser window ...
i'll order later ... i'll wait this version out ...
thanks again ...

BlogD said...

Sure thing. In the meantime, if you want to speed up your computer a bit, you might want to consider (if you don't do this already) backing up all your data and then doing a clean re-install of everything. In other words, wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS and all software from scratch. Of course, make sure that (a) you really do back everything up, (b) that you have all the software installers you need (many people throw them out for some reason), and then (c) that you are prepared to set up network connections and re-enter passwords (though one can simply save the keychains (system and user levels) and then implant them in the new OS--though you should make sure that the computer & account names are identical to before. Other preferences can be saved and re-inserted, but one of the things that slows down a computer over time is corruption within these prefs.

This kind of wipe-and-reinstall should be done on any computer (Mac or PC) once every year or two. It's a hassle, but it helps avoid crashes, slowdowns, and other issues that accumulate over time.

Afey said...

Ive upgraded mine (unibody macbook). After installing from the CD, there were some issues. But after I installed the 10.6.1 update it works fine. and the speed it really good.

Post a Comment