gdgt

If you're still on Tiger, well, you'll have to decide whether or not you want to drop $130 on what's essentially a spit-shined Leopard, but if you do decide to spend the cash you'll find that the experience of using a Mac has changed dramatically for the better since you last upgraded.

I'm content with Snow Leopard. It's the Mac OS X I know and love, but with more of the things that make it weak and strange engineered away.

Intel Mac users will like Snow Leopard's smartly designed interface enhancements, and its Exchange support is a must-have (especially with Outlook for Mac on the way). With a ton of technological improvements, Snow Leopard is worth the $29 upgrade fee.

Overall Snow Leopard is a worthy update to Leopard, a fine OS in itself. The changes will make a difference to your daily tasks, especially for those who tinker with video, where the QuickTime trim and video view in Finder are very handy.

Snow Leopard demands no retraining for its headline functionality, and delivers its invisible changes with minimal day-to-day fanfare. At $29 it’s frankly a no-brain decision for OS X Leopard users; that’s why we’re calling it the bargain of the year.

For $29, Snow Leopard truly delivers what it promises: a refined and polished Leopard experience that brings with it some small UI improvements, tightens the bolts, and sets the stage for some amazing things in the near future, thanks to the 64-bit architecture and OpenCL.

Snow Leopard is fast, sleek, and lean. Although it does have a few minor annoyances, I find it easy to recommend Snow Leopard to anyone who has the appropriate hardware. After all, for $29, how can you really go wrong?