Snow Leopard -> Mountain Lion upgrade, advice please?

[the.orange.tuba]

My hard drive crashed on my MacBook Pro, so I have to do something.

My MBP specs are: mid 2009 model, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26GHz, 8MB RAM.
I'll be installing a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB (SSD hybrid drive).

Should I upgrade to Mountain Lion or stay with SL? I'm leaning toward upgrade because:
1) I assume SL security updates will stop soon, if they haven't already.
2) I would like Time Machine Encryption. Under SL's TM, can anyone plug the external drive with TM into their Mac or PC and access files on it? I just want to be sure my TM backups are secure. So don't I need ML for this? This is my driving reason for getting ML, so if they are secure on SL then I might not need ML right away.
FYI, I don't need Rosetta, so that is a non-issue.

If I upgrade to ML, should I install SL first(add my data or not?) and make a Time Machine backup before installing ML, just in case I don't like ML? or should I just install ML first? FYI, I don't have any TM backups, so I will be manually installing my data from a backup disk.

I know this may be personal preference, but I'd be pleased to have your opinions and advice as I think about this.

Thanks!

 

[WSR]

If you are a heavy Spaces/Expose user make sure you check in to how Mission Control works before going to ML. Those like me see the desktops in ML as less functional to SL's Spaces. Also, though some of Expose's function have returned I don't think all of the options in SL have returned in ML.

Plus, if you have a second monitor, ML's Full-Screen mode will make it nearly useless.

Beyond this my understanding is:
1. "Save As..." has only returned as a keystroke and not a menu option.
2. I don't think "Do you want to to Save?" has returned.
3. There is limited control on Resume, Versions or AutoSave.

 

[throAU]

I've been using OS X since Leopard.

I've gone to Mountain Lion and would recommend doing the same personally for the security updates, gatekeeper, time machine local backups and to continue to be able to run new software.

Some of the features are very much personal preference, but I prefer Mountain Lion to any previous OS X I've used so far.

Full screen mode is useless with 2 monitors, sure - but with one monitor, it is awesome.

If you have 2 monitors, just continue using them the way you always have.

 

[the.orange.tuba]

I decided to upgrade to Mountain Lion and just did a clean install. All working smooth so far, but it's only been a couple hours or so.

I read a web article that said Apple did a large security patch for Safari on ML and Lion only(i.e. not Snow Leopard). So that got me a little concerned and the article outlined Apple OS update support history and from that I surmised there is probably not going to be that much more support for Snow Leopard, so I went on and upgraded to ML.

For those interested here is a link to one of the articles I read:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...left_wondering_if_OS_X_Snow_Leopard_s_retired

Personally, I was very happy with SL, and kind of feel forced into Mountain Lion. Yeah, I'll probably like it after I get used to it, but for now I'm hating this reverse scroll. Also, I could care less about all this social website integration, but I guess someone likes it! It just makes me wonder about privacy and security holes.

I also find it strange they had the firewall off by default. I think SL did too.

Anyway, thanks for your input, and feel free to add more if you like!
Have a nice day!