MacSmiley: It's always something

Edward Mendelson writes for PC Magazine. Here are a few excerpts from his 3 page review of Mac OS X 10.5:

Leopard is “by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value—like truly automated backups, preview images in folders, and notes and to-do lists integrated into the mail program…

I found Leopard to be startlingly fast, brilliantly streamlined, and packed with conveniences and innovations. Leopard’s rich set of built-in software runs faster than I imagined possible.

Leopard’s built-in backup system, Time Machine, works automatically to create full backups of a system, so, for the first time, I was able to create automatically-updated backups of my whole system without buying complex third-party software.

All setup procedures are smoother than ever, and easily available in System Preferences, so you don’t have to hunt down obscure setup programs.

If you’re in the market for a new machine, it’s time to look seriously at a Mac, especially now that all Macs can run Windows along with OS X through the built-in Boot Camp feature that lets you install Windows and Leopard in separate partitions. Even better, third-party software from Parallels or Vmware make it possible to run a Windows program in a window on the OS X desktop.

I’ve found Vista to be a major disappointment that tends to look worse the more I use it. [In comparison to XP] OS X is easier to manage and maintain and I vastly prefer OS X to Windows for Web-browsing, mail, and especially for any task that involves graphics, music, or video. Leopard performs all such tasks even better than previous versions did—and Leopard is the only OS on the planet that works effortlessly and intuitively in today’s world of networked computers and peripherals.Leopard is far from perfect, but it’s better than any alternative, and it’s getting harder and harder to find good reasons to use anything else.”