Leopard is out in the market. So, how has it fared thus far? 
There are three ways to install Leopard on your current mac.
- Buy a new mac with Leopard already installed on it.
- Upgrade your current Mac OS to Leopard
- Archive and Install – this means to back up your files first and install a fresh copy of Leopard
We originally thought Options 1 and 3 are the way to go since having a clean copy of Leopard is the way to go. Why? If you have any existing corruption or issues with the your current Operating System, it may be carried over to your upgraded Leopard operating system.
However, from the tests performed, option 3: Archive and Install, has shown from 15% of our cases where it would freeze and not allow further processing or installing. 50% of the time would run through fully, but would lag and take about 45 minutes to complete although meeting the recommended RAM and processor requirements. The rest of cases went through smoothly probably due to have over-qualified hard drive space and RAM requirements.
It is recommended to back up your important files first to an external hard drive or DVDs before installing Leopard. Sometimes, the archive feature doesn’t work well or freezes. Hey, it’s better to be safe than sorry! Then, our results show upgrading to Leopard is a more stable bet for now.