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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, to give it its full name, has now been available for a while now, long enough for users to decide if it is a hit or a miss.

But it seems that Apple has done a good job with Leopard and, apart from a few minor niggles mainly surrounding the transparency of the menu bar, the new reflective dock and some compatibility issues, it seems like a popular upgrade. To be honest, Microsoft should take a leaf out of Apple’s OS book when it comes to new products as Windows Vista has turned out to be a major pain for the company.

Leopard had more than 300 new features and as there isn’t enough space to go into them all in this feature, I thought I would concentrate on a few that I think might be of the most use to readers.

The first "feature" is a hike in computer performance over OS X 10.4 Tiger. It definitely feels snappier thanks to the revised code. To be honest, when I bought my MacBook running OS X 10.4 I thought it was a tad sluggish compared with an equivalent XP-powered PC.

A memory upgrade made little difference and I got used to seeing the little spinning beach ball on occasions when the machine thought about what I had just asked it to do.

Installing Leopard has made a big difference and it now feels much faster.

The second feature I like is called Spaces. This allows you to create multiple virtual "monitors", so that you can have different applications running in different windows.

When I first read about this I couldn’t quite see the point. After all, you have always had applications effectively running in their own window. But after using Spaces for a while it makes sense. I can now have Microsoft Windows running in one space, Photoshop running in another, my WP software running in a third and Firefox running in a fourth. The desktop is no longer cluttered and a quick keystroke lets me move between the different spaces at lightning speed.

If you are using a laptop or have a small monitor it really makes sense.

The next enhancement is Time Machine. A similar feature has been available on Windows for a while, but now Macs have the ability to wind back time to a point where you had files that you have subsequently deleted or when your machine worked properly. If you have just corrupted your font library, for example, you can wind the machine back to a time when it was OK.

Time Machine also allows for sophisticated back-ups to be made while you work, although they have to be written to an external USB/Firewire drive. These cost around $120-$200, depending on the hard disk size you want. You can also tweak Time Machine so that it only backs up what you want to save space.

My final favourite features are Quick Look, which enables you to instantly view the contents of any file from the finder without opening up its application, and Spotlight, which is snappier and now works as a dictionary and calculator too.

Add in built-in Boot Camp as standard (for running other operating systems like Windows without having to buy Parallels or Fusion) and Screen Sharing (which allows you to connect to and control another machine remotely or give a presentation) and the Leopard upgrade looks like good value for money.

If you are buying a new machine in the next six months I would probably advise you to hang fire. But for anyone else, I think it is a worthwhile investment. And yes, it does run on PowerPC Macs like the G4 and G5 as well as newer Intel machines. My upgrade took about an hour and a half to complete - your upgrade may take longer so don’t rush it.

ENDS