What Are My Options When Installing Leopard?

Get the Most from Leopard
Before Leopard comes out, I've made a little checklist of things to buy before Leopard if you really want to get everything out of it. Of course, none of these are requirements, and some may not be wise purchases depending on your situation:

• A Core 2 Duo Intel Mac- If you were already looking for an upgrade, the new Macs will come with Leopard, and you need an Intel Mac to take advantage of iChat's cool backdrop effect, and to generally run Leopard better.
• An external hard drive that is at the very least 1.5 times the size of your internal hard drive. For instance, my iMac has a 250 GB Hard Drive, and I have a 320 GB External hooked up. Get a Firewire external drive if you can afford it. They are a bit more expensive, but they are a lot faster. What to get this for? Time Machine, of course. It can automatically backup all the files you choose to your external drive. The best part is you can flip through them later with a cool space effect.
• 1 GB or more RAM - If you only have 512 MB of RAM, or worse 256 MB, then you need an upgrade. My advice would be to get as much RAM as your computer can hold and/or you can afford, so that you won't have to keep replacing RAM over and over again as you need more and more. The requirement for Leopard is only 512 MB, but if you plan to do anything with Leopard, with anything under 1 GB, it'll be jumpy and slow.
• An external iSight or other webcam if your computer doesn't have one built in. If you use iChat now, I can bet you'll want to take advantage of some of the video features in iChat with Leopard. Try to find a Mac-compatible third party webcam, though... iSights aren't even made by Apple anymore and go on eBay for upwards of $120.

Installation Options
Now to the good part- which type of install? There are three types of installations you can choose from when installing Leopard: Erase and Install, Archive and Install, and Upgrade and Install.

Before any install, you should back up all of your files to an external drive or another computer. If that is not possible, then the Erase and Install is not for you, as it will delete everything on your hard drive and then install a fresh version of Leopard. On the other hand, if you have a backup of your files and you want your system to be squeaky clean (and possibly run a tad faster, too), you might want to do an Erase and Install.

Archive and Install and Upgrade Install do the exact same thing, with one little difference. Both of them will keep all of your files and settings and install Leopard right overtop of Tiger (this does NOT mean you shouldn't back up your files if possible; you never know what might go wrong.) The one difference is that Archive and Install saves all of your old System Files from Tiger in a folder marked "Previous System" in case something should go wrong with Leopard and you need your old system files back. I would recommend an Upgrade and Install to everyone with their files backed up, and an Archive and Install (a tiny bit safer) to anyone with no backups.

As for actually installing it, none of these different install methods are any harder or slower than any other. All you have to do is pop in the Leopard disc, choose what type of install you'd like, and wait about an hour for it to install.

As a side note, I have seen a few people trying to sell perfectly good and up to date Macs so that they can buy a new one with Leopard pre-installed. If you are one of these people, listen to me now: The install from the factory is exactly the same thing as the "Erase and Install" that you do yourself from the Leopard disc. Plus, you will most likely end up losing more money and time trying to sell your Mac and get a new one than you would if you ponied up $129 (or $109 if you pre-order from Amazon) for Leopard.

Post modified from an original post at totallytechblog.com. Adam Fisher-Cox is an avid Mac User. Find him online at adamfishercox.com.

Have you learned anything from past upgrades? Share your tips in the Comments section below!

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