Snow Leopard: Who has upgraded, how did it go - recommended?

[alexjholland]

Hey

I have an early 2009 white Macbook and Ableton Live Suite 8, with a few VSTs - mainly by Native Instruments.

I also have photoshop CS3, the Microsoft Office Mac package and that's just about it.

I like to keep up on Software so am tempted by Snow Leopard - the promise that I'll have some extra space freed on my hard drive after installation is a good benefit in itself.

I've got my Macbook very organised with all my music/sample folders and custom Ableton logos on all my folders, silly things like that I'd like to keep.

What have your upgrade experiences been like? I'd like to bung the disc in and upgrade without having to moved my stuff off the Macbook first - and ideally keeping as many of my tweaks and system customistations as possible.

What have your experiences of upgrading been like? Any benefits? Any problems?

Thanks!

[Tarekith]

Just got 10.6.4 here, seems to be working fine so far.

[3phase]

10.63 gave me the feeling that its not good for older laptops.. 10.62 behaved better... lets say i am not happy with 10.63

in generl sno leo has improovements..but also follows the trend towards less stability.. its possible agi that an app freezes the computer...

in older os x versions it allways was possible to terminate a crashed app from the finder...

maybe there are ways to achive that with the console now... but i am not aware of them...

time to do some unix lessons? :-/

[3phase]

10.64 is there? good..was sooo close to downgrade..and thats not easy and without loss... i try 10.64 first

[myxomat0515]

I've been running SL since a month after it came out. Mac Pro and more recently on an early 09 MBP. Definitely a noticed improvement overall. Not necessarily with Live, but I certainly haven't noticed any problems, and I'd say its at least as stable as Leopard. I use a fair amount of plugins, rewire other apps, etc. It was a pretty smooth transition.

[Pasha]

Upgrade or full install?

[pepezabala]

I upgraded my 2008 macbook 2.0 ghz last month from tiger to SL. And swapped the 80 GB harddrive for a 500 GB seagate. No big difference in performance. But snow leopard is very nice for previewing files, and has quite some little workflow-improvements that I like.

I did not upgrade during two years or so because I thought "never change a running system", but now everything seems to work fine after the upgrade as well.

And the bigger harddisk is a relief.

[Pasha]

I upgraded my 2008 macbook 2.0 ghz last month from tiger to SL. And swapped the 80 GB harddrive for a 500 GB seagate. No big difference in performance. But snow leopard is very nice for previewing files, and has quite some little workflow-improvements that I like.

I did not upgrade during two years or so because I thought "never change a running system", but now everything seems to work fine after the upgrade as well.

And the bigger harddisk is a relief.

Did you have to authorize Live again on the new drive?
Can you be describe your upgrade process? I have a 2006 C2D Mackbook with 2GB RAM
that could benefit from the same treatment.

- Best
- Pasha

[pepezabala]

no reauthorizing live, not for the OS upgrade, not for the disk-swap.

it's easy as pie, actually.

for the harddisk swap: just get carbon copy cloner, get a new disk, stick it into a case, clone your existing disk on it. Then open the macbook, swap the disks done. You will need a special screwdriver to get the harddisk out of a slipping-tray from the macbook. I just went down and round the corner to a computerstore and they gave me this tool for a minute.

for the os upgrade: stick in the snowleopard-dvd to the computer, press ok, go make lunch. after one hour or so the computer boots into the new OS.

[squelcht]

do it. it would quite possibly be the best thing you ever do to your MacBook. think of it as a major over haul/tune-up.

[Captain Johnson]

I've got a MBP 2006 CD 1.83hz (well analogue) for doing live stuff and a Imac late 2008 2.66hz C2D BOTH on leopard. Got Snow Leopard sitting right there, Should I upgrade?????? Also I'm still running Ableton 8.9 should I make the leap to 8.1.3 too???

Advice appreciated!

[KrisM]

I upgraded to Snow Leopard back before Ableton released an official Live SL build and it's been fine ever since. 10.6.3 killed wifi on my 2009 Macbook initially but I think they slipped out some secret update because it works for the most part, now.

Here's hoping 10.6.4 doesn't destroy it again

[ChadThomas]

Snow Leopard is ok as long as you're running Live 8. If you're like me and still running Live 6 (unemployed,broke) and decide to buy a 2010 MacBook Pro i7 (hence the brokeness) you will have nothing but problems. Before anyone tells me "well Live 6 was made for the OS X version released at that time, so you should just upgrade hawhawhaw!" I know this. Just a fair warning to those looking to upgrade their machine or OS. Live 8 has been around so long I would regret buying it only to see an upgrade right after. Ableton sending all those emails advertising discounts on upgrades to Live 8 tells me Live 9 is right around the corner. Lets hope the long overdue 64 bit native version finally shows up in Live 9!

[glitchrock-buddha]

Absolutely upgrade to snow leopard. Better performance. Some very nice file browsing and previewing features. And you'll likely get a bunch of extra space back on your hard drive. I think I got 15 extra gigs or so. And now snow leopard and windows 7 with parallels 5 is a really sweet combination too.

[alex.the.forge]

I think I have the same machine (early 2009) and yeah went really good here - I got a new Hard drive and did a fresh install and I instantly noticed a big difference

a little bus powered caddy made the whole thing painless