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So I’ve been Leopardized! And gosh, it feels great.

Since it’s a busy night, I’ve decided to micro-review the new feline unleashed by Apple.

Installation went more than smoothly, given the fact that I have backed up most of my stuff using iBackup to an external hard drive, I just restarted and started rolling. I did a clean install of course and I recommend that to all of you – there’s nothing like the smell of a crisp clear Leopardized system in the autumn air.

I restored most of my stuff by hand, but restoring some things from iBackup went really smooth too. Beware though, if you, like me, use Soho Notes to gather your gazillion tidbits during the day, be sure to export and save your database, because due to stupid OpenBase, resides in some arcane folder that did not get backed up by iBackup. How quaint. For the record, I lost all of my Soho Notes stored stuff. Sigh.

The new Desktop & Dock are pweeeeeeeetty. I guess I’d love a 3d horizontal dock if I had a humongous 24” iMac, but on my 13.3” Macbook, I always set the dock vertically on the left. The translucent effect and tiny shiny baubles is nice, me likes.

Stacks is a neat idea, really. Does not work too nice with too many files, but help you organize your downloads and even clean them up! How cool is that?

The new Finder is full of tiny usability fixes that makes navigating around your system’s files easier than ever. Quicklook is perfect for quickly checking photos among different folders, really, it’s a gem feature for times like these.

The new Spotlight is fast, but I’ll never switch from Quicksilver, that application is too much of a tool for me, it can do things Spotlight will never do. I must admit though that Spotlight is the fastest search mechanism I’ve seen embedded in an OS.

Spaces is… well… useful I guess. But I must admit : I get lost in all the shiny windows! Seriously. So I reduced the default 4 spaces to 2. Aaah, much better (and simpler).

I haven’t used Time Machine just yet, because my LaCie is full of backups that must be sorted out and deleted. I’m sure it’s pretty much simple, though, simple and powerful.

The new Mail sure looks promising – I love the fact that they added notes and to-dos, which can transform your inbox to a true productivity powerhouse given the right conditions. By the way, was that Exchange support always there?

iChat got a handful of pleasant surprises – I love effects and animated backgrounds and tabbed chats and all this, eventhough I use Adium as my main IM client. Still, iChat is one of the prime solutions for video chatting, if you don’t want to get involved with call-me-digitized-voice Skype.

All in all, my system runs smoothly as butter so far, with only the occasional hiccup from a stubborn app that refuses to be leopardized. As if it has a choice, ha!

My suggestion? Don’t wait. Just don’t. Do it, today!

*jumps around in sheer apple fangirlism*

apple, leopard, macosx, time machine, ichat, quicklook, dock, finder, spotlight, spaces, ichat, mail.app