I’ve decided to take the plunge tomorrow and pick up a copy of Leopard.  Hopefully I’ll have it all installed and ready by the time we record this week’s episode of the GGP.

I was trying to figure out how I can streamline the process of getting myself back up to speed as quickly as possible.  Of course the obvious answer is to do an ‘upgrade’ installation of Leopard over top of my existing OS X 10.4.  But I’ve always been a bit anal when it comes to OS installations, I hate upgrades.  It means that all the crap you’ve got on your machine now will still be there, so I prefer to ‘wipe and reload’.

The Process

1. A few days before, I’ve done a full backup of the data which won’t change between now and ‘upgrade day’.  This includes my 26GB iPhoto Library.
2. Tonight I downloaded the installers for several of the applications I use most regularly.  These include:
   • Firefox
   • Thunderbird
   • Sunbird
   • VMWare Fusion
   • Aquamacs
   • Skype
   • Adium
   • SSHOpener
   • several others…
3. Tomorrow right before I head out to work, I’ll start the final data backup, making a second copy of my most critical data onto a network share (in case disaster strikes).
4. When I get home tomorrow, double check the backups to ensure everything’s kosher.
5. Insert the brand new Leopard disc and begin the install…
6. Once Leopard is set up, I’ll install all the applications that I have on disc, and in my downloads folder
7. Transfer the data back to the Macbook
8. Enjoy the newest commercial operating system in the world!  (for the next week until some fancy new Linux distro comes out…  :mrgreen: )

Now all I have to do is put this plan into action…