Who’s ready to upgrade to Snow Leopard? With only days before it goes on sale, you might be asking yourself, will Snow Leopard work on my PowerPC Mac, or if I still have Tiger on my Intel Mac, can I use the upgrade DVD? You might also be thinking about backing up or cloning your existing Leopard Volume.
The question I hear a lot is, “Will Snow Leopard work on my PowerPC Mac?” the answer is “No”. This will be the first operating system since Apple switched to all Intel processors that will not support the PowerPC Mac. But, don’t get discouraged because Leopard runs very well on a PowerPC Mac.
As for Mac users that still have Tiger on their Intel Macs, you can still install Snow Leopard. The caveat, though, is that you will not be able to use the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade. Instead you will have to use the Mac Box Set. This Box Set includes the full version of Snow Leopard along with iLife ’09 and iWork ’09, all for $169. If you break down the cost of each software you’ll be saving around $118 with this Box Set.
As an added assurance, I recommend making an image of your current computer. I find making an image is far better than making a last minute backup. Because inevitably, you will miss files here and there. To clone your Leopard Volume you’ll need two things. First, you’ll need an additional partitioned hard drive. I use an external hard drive because I have iMacs and a MacBook. Second, you will need cloning software. There are two I recommend. The first one is SuperDuper! from Shirt Pocket. This application will cost you $27.95. The other application is Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich Software. This application is free. Both applications work very well. I personally use Carbon Copy Cloner. It’s free and does the job fine.
I hope these steps will make your upgrade process a smooth and simple one. I would like to hear your upgrade experience, or maybe you have different steps to upgrading. If so drop a line in the comments section.
