The Snow Leopard is not the full proof upgrade I had hoped it would be and if I had known it would wreak havoc with my software I may have had second thoughts. After I loaded the disc, I came back only to find my machine 60 minutes later lost in the black screen of death that cycled in and out of trying to start. Horrifying! Since that moment it has been one event after another. I have had to purchase many upgrades from other program manufacturers as well.
I am not one to give up easy so I stared at the screen in the hopes I could somehow make it come to life. I tried the usual black screen stuff like adjusting the display brightness with F2 that I have set to fn F2 due to my Adobe activities with no luck. Then deep in the black screen I saw an extremely faint login I fumbled with the cursor to locate the area. I entered my password, and the machine sprang to life. What a relief to at least see an active screen again.
It has been ten full days since I started this upgrade process and have found it a mixed blessing. The Snow Leopard really does polish the already stellar Leopard OS but opens Pandoras box of cascading upgrades as well. The black screen thing is critical, and I don’t have answers for that other than to peer into the screen for your login after the machine has tried and failed to start.
Some of the programs currently used by Leopard are not compatible with the 64 bit platform and need to be switched to 32 bit in Snow Leopard if you don’t want to upgrade them. To change this select the program in the Finder, right click the program, and then select get info then just select the 32 bit check box.
Being a proficient sudo geek I find the Snow Leopard to have some big challenges for the non technical user. When I upgraded to Leopard from Tiger there were a few disparities but they were a cake walk compared to the Snow Cat. Be ready for some serious work if you upgrade.
The Positive Snow Leopard
- My Mac Book Pro is running amazingly cooler now.
- Little additions to make file management better.
- Start ups and shut downs are much faster.
- The programs I had to upgrade have some cool new features.
- I am upgraded until the next system release.
- I learned many new things about my system.
There, you have my synopsis of the Snow Leopard Upgrade from Leopard. I would rate it very difficult for the non tech user, and difficult for a tech oriented user. My experience may be unique, but I doubt it. I do have a lot more software on my machine than most people would think of having so maybe that had something to do with the issues. Now that it is all complete I am happy I made the switch. Still the Black Screen and other associated issues make it difficult for me to recommend right now.
