Mac OSX Leopard Worth the Upgrade

Leopard, the new Mac OSX operating system, ships with over 300 new features. Since its release date just over a month ago, there have been countless reviews, blog posts, and lists covering the highlights of the system. With so many to choose from, I decided to list the top five reasons I upgraded from Tiger (OSX 10.4) to Leopard (OSX 10.5).

1. Time Machine:
This built-in back up system is one of the most adored features of the new operating system for its convenience and user-friendly interface. Thankfully, Time Machine lives up to all the hype it's getting in the press.

I would imagine that many of us know the pain of a failed hard drive or lost data, and with Time Machine, you can rest assured knowing that you'll be able to recover your data (or, if you're a nerd like me, your whole life) without any hassle.

While setup isn't quite as easy as Apple makes it seem, the software is amazing once you get it up and running. If you can't find a file and think you might have deleted it, simply click on the Time Machine icon in your dock to see a history of your current folder. Use the arrows to navigate back in time until you see the file you're missing. When you've got it, just click restore and you're back in business.

Time Machine could lead to record numbers of users keeping backups of their data, and probably also lead to a big increase in external hard drive sales.

2. Spaces:

With laptop sales topping the bill for Apple, there will be more users who need better ways to manage all their open windows. Sure, if you have a 24" monitor, it's easy to have several application windows open at once, but laptop users might find it hard to see everything on a 13" or 15" screen. Apple introduced Expose to help solve the screen real estate problem by showing you all your open windows with the click of a button.