Best Way to Upgrade New iMac

[nakile]

Got my iMac today! (20" screen, 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM, the basics. Although compaired to the PC world, this is mid-high end. )

I'm having absolutly no problems at all. Silent as a mouse, no crashing, works super great (Although I should hold my breath, I'm currently downloading the Tiger updates). You could say there is a slight granet, but it's just so miniscule that it doesn't matter at all.

But here's the million dollar question: what would be the best way to do the Leopard upgrade? Keep in mind that this is a brand new system. I would imagine that doing a plain upgrade, not an Archive & Install, would work fine.

I haven't installed anything besides the updates. Like I said, I doubt that anything bad could happen with a fresh Tiger install. This is probably how Apple test the upgrade sysetm anyway.

What are your recomendations?

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Plain upgrade.

 

[flopticalcube]

You really have nothing to lose by doing an erase and install. Your call.

 

[psonice]

If you have no data to back up and no apps installed, I'd definitely go with erase and install. Then you have a perfectly fresh install with no bits of tiger hanging around waiting to cause trouble

A fresh install is always better than an upgrade, it's mostly a question of whether it's worth the trouble of backing everything up.

 

[nakile]

I decided to go with an Archive and Install. It worked great, although I do get the Spinning Beach Ball every few hours for a second or two and I've had a program or two quit on me when I try to open them. I hit retry and it opens fine afterwards. I'm sure that this isn't related to my upgrade method, but to the fact that Leopard is only a month old.

Never the less, Leopard rocks. The two second Beach Balls are nothing compared to the 12 second or longer of slow down and temporary unresponsiveness I would get with Windows XP. I'll never look at a WinPC the same way again.

 

[AlexisV]

Updated to Leopard 10.5.1? Go to Software Update.

 

[dXTC]

nakile, I got the same model that you did just this past Sunday. I went with the Erase and Install option, to ensure a squeaky-clean Leopard experience free from Tiger remnants. Of course, there is that extra step of re-installing iLife from the Tiger discs, but that was easy enough.

Leopard indeed rocks.

Funny you should mention not looking at a WinPC the same way again. I have pretty much the same opinion now, even though I activated Bootcamp. The only reason I'll be using XP via Bootcamp is for VPN/pcAnywhere (I'm on an after-hours on-call rotation at my workplace, which does not have the Mac version of pcAnywhere available yet), and for Cakewalk SONAR, a pro-grade digital audio application which will probably never be ported to Mac. I'll be doing everything else on the Mac side of things.