The Baldy’s get Leopard
Quick post about Apple’s Leopard. Webreality is mainly a Microsoft shop, but at home the Baldy’s use Macs. We’ve got a big iMac in the kitchen that acts as a digital hub for the whole house - iTunes is piped around the house to different airports, and any Macs joined to the network can access all media. We’ve got a nice Canon printer/scanner tucked away and connected to Airport, because you really don’t want an ugly printer in your kitchen.This weekend we upgraded the whole network to Leopard. Leopard looks and feels fantastic, although the installation time was lengthy. One of the nice things with upgrading an OS with Apple is that performance gets better not worse, and Leopard was no exception. The main iMac has suffered from time to time with 5 users logging in and leaving apps running - Leopard seems to handle this much more easily.From a family perspective Leopard’s a great leap forward. Parental controls are really sophisticated, I can control access times, websites, application lists, even approved friend lists for iChat and Mail (they can request additional contacts remotely). I can take remote access of the home iMac and fix any issues the family may have, as well as browse logs of all internet access.Then we plugged in a new 500GB external drive. The Mac turned it into a time machine drive and promptly took an image of the iMac. Backing up my MacBook Pro was just as easy (even faster on the MacBook pro with Firewire 800). Time Machine really is the killer app for me in Leopard. Our family iMac has years of family related media which is literally priceless.Spaces is old hat (Linux users have had this for years), but still where Leopard scores, is the ambient environment of sheer designed luxury. Rush out and buy it now, it’s a bargain.
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