Jaguar: This Cat Actually Plays With You!

So, Chas, what do you think of Jaguar? Well I've only had about 24 hours to play with it seriously, but any doubts I had about it being worth $129 are completely gone. It's certainly worth that much if not more.

This version of the OS not only vastly improves responsiveness/performance, but updates all the UNIX underpinnings and, through a generous plethora of new features, takes the Mac -- and UNIX, for that matter -- to places no computer has ever gone before. I'll natter on about the full list of features some other time, but here's the bottom-line type report:

1. Takes a long time to install -- about 40-60 minutes.
2. Speed is greatly improved. No more looking at OS 9 or XP and wishing yours was that snappy.
3. The new features (such as iChat and the vastly improved Windows networking) rock!
4. Make sure you defragment your hard drive and optimise your directory (preferably using DiskWarrior 2.1, but Norton 7.x or Drive 10 will do in a pinch) immediately after upgrading! It really makes a difference. No, I don't know why every major system update since 10.0 seems to fragment the directory/drive so much.