[thelist] [OT] upgrading Mac from OS9 to OSX, thoughts?

[kkrista at voot.pair.com]

chris,

i've never been much of a mac guy, but i picked one up a few years back to
use for testing. when os x came out i upgraded to it immediately. since
this wasn't my primary machine it didn't matter too much to me if i hit
some snags. having upgraded many versions of windows, i was prepared for
the worst and decided to backup my data and do a clean install instead of
just an upgrade. i can only say, "wow!" microsoft could truly learn
something from apple when it comes to just how smooth of an installation os
x was. it was by far the easiest os installation i've ever done.

as far as compatability goes, i've actually found that many legacy
applications run quite well under the mac "classic" environment. i still
run an os 9 version of photoshop because it does everything i need and the
speed hit by running classic was not too significant, though i will note
that when it comes to photoshop i am not a poweruser so i don't use a lot
of the more resource intensive features. there were a couple of apps that
wouldn't run under classic, most notably protools, but i can run those by
booting into os 9. (side note: in order to run classic you'll need to
install os 9 and then os x over it. a little time consuming but worth it to
gain support of older apps). as for sharing space on a network with windows
boxes, os x has made it very easy to mount a shared windows drive right out
of the box.

one last side note is that even though i started with a windows box as my
primary machine and my mac as a test platform, my upgrade to os x has
left my mac as my most used machine and my windows box as just another
setting on my kvm switch that gets occasional use when i feel like
spending some time with nhl 2003.  :-)

hope this info is helpful,
ken