Review by B.L.

10.5 upgraded from 10.4 like a dream. No difficulties at all on a Powerbook G4.

Time Machine has been a fantastic feature to have, painlessly backing up data for me in the background and saving me the trouble of doing so manually. Typically it does so with no additional drag on the responsiveness of the computer (which is several years old, and I tend to run a lot of programs at a time) though occasionally if I’ve left it unhooked from the external drive for an extended period and it has a lot to sort through the responsiveness will slow for a minute or two while it catches up.

Spaces is a great feature as well, allowing you to divide your windows up among multiple ‘virtual’ desktops. On this particular computer I find that I don’t use it a great deal, because I don’t find that a laptop lends itself to this style of use for me. However, I’ve used similar features from Linux distributions on a desktop to know that in that situation it’s a great help to keeping things organized and moving along.

If you’re happy with Tiger (10.4) and already have a solid backup arrangement I wouldn’t necessarily say that you must rush to update as quickly as possible. Tiger was beautifully done and continues to stand well. For the average user, I expect that the improvements in Leopard more than justify its purchase.