Matt Oettinger

Like many other geeks, I spent yesterday morning in line at the Apple store, waiting to get my nerdy hands on Snow Leopard. What follows is my experience with the installation process and the before and after comparison of my machine, a MacBook Pro (late 2008) Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz with 3GB RAM.

The Installation

From DVD insert to the “end” of installation,¬† 46 minutes elapsed. I put the word “end” in quotes because I am guessing the installation did not end as it was supposed to; I got a blue screen with the MacOSx welcome video playing. I waited for the video to finish but the blue screen remained. To ensure this wasn’t part of the installation, I waited for about 10 minutes (not included in the 46 minutes) before holding down the power button to shut down my machine. After restarting, my normal desktop appeared and all was well.

I looked into the blue screen issue and have not found any other users having this issue with Snow Leopard but did find many that did when installing it’s predecessor, Leopard. Had something to do with incompatible software that messed up the end of the installation. From the information I’ve found, this was addressed and was not supposed to be an issue with Snow Leopard. Guess it’s still an issue but in my opinion, a small one as all I had to do was restart.

Lastly, upon opening Mail, I was given the warning that some of my Mail plug-ins were incompatible and would need to be updated to work with Snow Leopard. No biggie. After that, I was told that the Mail database would need to be reorganized for Snow Leopard. This took about a minute after which Mail finally opened. I did not conduct any speed tests on Mail so it might just be in my head but I could swear that the program does operate a ton faster in terms of loading messages in the reading pane and opening and closing messages. Big plus for me considering I get about 20 new RSS feed emails every few minutes.

Before and After

Yes, their is no doubt that Snow Leopard is leaner, meaner, and faster. The proof is in the pudding…and my test results. Snow Leopard cleared up 8.2GB of space on my hard drive which I didn’t really need as I recently installed a larger drive myself (Let me know if you’d like me to write a how-to for that). That said, it’s great to see a new OS whose footprint takes up 8GB less than its predecessor. As for pure machine speed, I did notice improvement; nothing that is earth shaking but improvement nonetheless.

• Shutdown time went from 7 seconds down to 4 seconds.
• Startup from 48 seconds to 33 seconds.
• Zip of a 1.1GB file from 3:05 minutes to 2:55 minutes.

Again, nothing earth shattering but who doesn’t love speed boosts, big AND small? One test result that did baffle me a little was my before and after Xbench results. I often use this program to test out my machine when installing new drives, RAM, etc. In this instance, my Xbench score was actually 4 points higher before I installed Snow Leopard. Go figure.

So Do You Need to Get This or Not?

Of course! Yes, I am bias because I am an avid Mac lover but if the past is any proof, when Apple tells us we need something, they are usually right. This OS is a steal at $30 when you consider what you get; speed boosts, a smaller footprint and other goodies that fine-tune your machine. So stop reading this post, get in the car, go get it, and comment on this post, letting us know how your installation went.

Update: I might have found the reasoning behind my blue screen during installation. Since last spring, I had been having issues with my Ethernet connection from self-assigning IP addresses(don’t get my started) to intermittent connection issues. Since installing Snow Leopard, I have also had multiple instances where I restarted my machine and was presented with the blue screen, having to restart again until it went away. Well yesterday I thought I’d take a wild guess and unplug my Ethernet cable and voila! No blue screen at restart. Since yesterday, I have restarted multiple times to test this theory and no blue screen to speak of. So I suppose the issue is now my Ethernet but how strange that it would cause a blue screen.

Tags: Mac, Snow Leopard