Growl

Tiger is out and it's awesome.

Got my copy over the weekend and installed it right away. I had issues on my first install because I didn't unplug my firewire drive, something that I guess should have been understood. Once I figured that out though, the install was a snap.

The first noticable difference is the speed. It just seems to run faster than it's other large-cat-counterparts Jaguar and Panther. Programs load faster, the computer awakes from sleep faster and searching is faster. When I got my iMac G5, I was a bit underwhelmed by the speed of it in comparison to the grey and white G4 Powermac I was using before. This OS gets rid of my speed concerns.

Spotlight is awesome, but I am really looking forward to using it more as I get more of my stuff converted over to my Mac...I've still got a few PC leftovers that I would like to eliminate if possible. Getting those indexed in Spotlight so they are easy to find in the future would make things easier.

My favorite (albeit very trite) feature is Dashboard, the handy-dandy widget holder complete with all the stuff you use regularly, but shouldn't need the internet for (package tracking, yellow pages, dictionary, thesaurus, etc.). I recently downloaded the Yahoo! Local Traffic widget and it is cool...giving you live updates of traffic in your area. Very nice little feature.

Overall, I'm finding that I want to spend more time on my computer just because the OS is so pretty. At work, I'm stuck on this awful XP-laden Dell, and I long for walks in the park with a shiny Aqua theme and a functional Dock and Dashboard. It also makes me realize that I need a prettier home for my computer. I think I'm going to build a desk this summer. It might be a bit of a project, but because of the size and shape of the room, custom is the only way I can go.

One can wish...