iMac and Snow Leopard - upgrade or no?

coylemj

I have a 2010 iMac running Snow Leopard with 8GB RAM running bog-standard apps. I do not have a trackpad, I just use the Bluetooth mouse.

Is there any compelling reason to upgrade to Lion or should I just stay put? I know support for Snow Leopard will be eventually withdrawn and at some stage in the future I'll have to upgrade but I'm not really bothered at the moment.

My reading of user comments on various fora suggests that a trackpad is almost a must for Lion so between the h/w and the s/w that makes it a €100 upgrade, is it worth it?

Sad Professor

I don't have the magic trackpad and I'd still consider Lion a worthy upgrade. I'd definitely recommend upgrading. Maybe just wait until 10.7.3 when all the major bugs are ironed out. But having said that, I haven't had any issues with Lion in weeks.

Permabear

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donutheadhomer

Permabear wrote: »

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I know this is highly subjective but I've found the battery life much worse on Lion that on Snow Leopard. Seems to last about 4 hours on Lion but about 7.5hours on Snow Leopard - same applications same usage.

donutheadhomer

Permabear wrote: »

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I know this is highly subjective but I've found the battery life much worse on Lion that on Snow Leopard. Seems to last about 4 hours on Lion but about 7.5hours on Snow Leopard - same applications same usage.

Sad Professor

EurasianBadger wrote: »

I know this is highly subjective but I've found the battery life much worse on Lion that on Snow Leopard. Seems to last about 4 hours on Lion but about 7.5hours on Snow Leopard - same applications same usage.

You need to check all the third party applications you have installed. One of them is obviously not playing nice with Lion.

donutheadhomer

Sad Professor wrote: »

You need to check all the third party applications you have installed. One of them is obviously not playing nice with Lion.

Thats what I thought also. So I tried just the OS on both versions with just iWork installed. Seme issue. lol.

deckstunt

When Snow Leopard was released I jumped at the chance and installed it as soon as it was released.

There were quite a few issues that annoyed me about Snow Leopard ( such as printer driver and software compatibility) that took quite a while to resolve (if they were resolved at all).

This time I'm taking things nice and slow. (I've a Samsung printer that I'm am not ditching for no upgrade, no matter how good!). In fact the more I think about it and the more I let the marketing hype passover me the more I wonder if I will bother up grading at all.

I'm quite happy with Snow Leopard. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Permabear wrote: »

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I'm pretty sure Snow Leopard has full disk encryption.

coylemj wrote: »

My reading of user comments on various fora suggests that a trackpad is almost a must for Lion so between the h/w and the s/w that makes it a €100 upgrade, is it worth it?

I had a Track Pad and hated it. Sent it back.

Talisman

I'd stick with Snow Leopard for the moment, there are still a few niggles that need to be worked out in Lion.

mikemac

deckstunt wrote: »

When Snow Leopard was released I jumped at the chance and installed it as soon as it was released.

There were quite a few issues that annoyed me about Snow Leopard ( such as printer driver and software compatibility) that took quite a while to resolve (if they were resolved at all).

Had much the same issues
Snow Leopard and HP software for printers had a host of issues and I never realy did get solved

Was in a rush to upgrade to Snow Leopard but for now, I'll hold off for a few months on Lion

Talisman

Today I discovered a reason why I may need to rollback to Snow Leopard.

The additional application sandboxing security in Lion means that it is no longer possible to capture audio from a specific application using Sound Flower or WireTap Anywhere - something I've come to rely upon over the last few years for work. Ambrosia Software have decided not to press the issue with Apple so the situation is not likely to change.

The only other solution I can think of is to install a Snow Leopard VM but that's a violation of Apple's Software License also. "It just works" - those days are over.

afatbollix

Folks my software is Mac OS X 10.5.8 what OX do I have?

I think I need to update to Snow Leopard first before updating to Lion? Can any one confirm?

Thanks

Talisman

10.5.x is Leopard

Unless you purchase the extortionately priced USB key installer from Apple you will need to install 10.6.7 first as it has the App store where you can purchase and download Lion.

afatbollix

So if I buy this http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD256?mco=MjQ1MzkyMDY

I dont have to buy both Snow leopard & lion? Just this stick. It works out the same price I think so I might do that..

Sad Professor

Yes. However, you may need to do a clean install as I'm not sure if it is possible to upgrade directly from Tiger to Lion. Can anyone confirm this? A clean install is probably the wisest course of action anyway given the issues I and others have experienced.

And that's the UK store btw.

Padgeman

Sad Professor wrote: »

A clean install is probably the wisest course of action anyway given the issues I and others have experienced.

+++++

Everyone I know who has any problems with Lion whatsoever has done an upgrade install from Snow Leopard. Clean install is the way to go it seems.

Savman

I've had more crashes in a month with Lion than in a full year of Leopard. For those of you yet to Upgrade and thinking of doing so, don't.

I've had trouble with everything from Printer drivers to horrific audio problems and on to software and programs crashing randomly for no reason at all, frustrating is not the word :mad: