A new animal for SGD48

Installing the latest Snow Leopard operating system is like turbo-charging an ageing car with just a simple oil change.

The process could not be simpler but more on that later. First, let me clarify the test parameters. As the OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard is designed to be a step-up, I put it to the test by upgrading from an existing v10.5.8 Leopard running on a 2.26GHz 13.3-inch MacBook Pro.

For the sake of fair comparison, I spent an hour or so upgrading to the latest updates. Then, I tested the speeds of applications such as Finder, Spotlight, Safari and iPhoto and iMovie.

Back to the ease of installation: Just slot in the Snow Leopard CD, click on the Install Mac OS X button in the pop-up menu, sit back and have a cup of coffee.

What amazed me most was that there were no product numbers to enter or convoluted activation processes to go through.

The system rebooted halfway and then carried on effortlessly. Everything was done in about 50 minutes even though the initial welcome screen said that it needed about an hour. A quick check showed that the OS took up about 12.6GB of my hard disk, shaving off about 6GB from the older v10.5.8. The improvements in performance were noticeable immediately. The new OS loads in 22 sec, compared to 28 sec for the older OS.

All the applications performed faster and screens loaded quickly. I could not even clock iCal as it started up almost instantaneously. Opening it in v10.5.8 took about 4.4 seconds. The results were similar for all the applications I tested.

As you explore the OS, familiar functions such as Stacks and Expose on the Dock works more intuitively. For example, just click-and-hold the application icon and all the instances of that program pop up before your very eyes. This makes searching for and selecting a particular screen that much faster.

All these are possible because the OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard has achieved what has never been attempted in the PC industry – upgrading the core applications from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Windows users will know how difficult this is: They have to start from scratch and load the 64-bit version of the OS and then painstakingly install every single piece of software. Aside from under-the-hood refinements, there is also software ease. For users who want to use the MacBook for work, you now have a more compelling reason to do so.

Snow Leopard supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. You need not purchase Office for Mac 2008 in order to read your corporate e-mail. Mail, iCal and Address Book now come with built-in support for that.

Configuring Mail to access the Exchange could not be simpler. I simply entered my e-mail account and the software automatically detected the server. It also has options to set up your Address Book contacts and iCal calendars all in one screen.

I must say that I am more used to Entourage, Mac Office 2008’s equivalent to Microsoft Outlook. The three applications are all integrated in one place. With Snow Leopard though, I have to flip between three applications.

Taking its cue from the iPhone, Snow Leopard now allows you to enter Chinese characters by writing on the Multi-Touch trackpad.

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