Well what can I say. I fell for their marketing ploy. Totally fell. I am now the proud owner of OS X Leopard. I spent all night last night backing up my entire 10.4 Tiger setup, then I proceeded into the Leopard install. The FIRST thing I did after that was install Boot Camp and went over to Steam to get my Half-life 2 fix on.

So now what? Well how about a mini review? I should totally post a full one on Pluh.com just for shits and giggles.

• Boot Camp – As I mentioned, this was the first thing I installed. The first time around I didn’t “properly” format the partition made in OS X, so I had to start over. That was my fault. USER ERRAWR. After that, Windows XP Professional installed just fine and the first initial boot into it gave me a blank (not even lit up) screen. I powered my MacBook Pro down and restarted. Windows booted… FAST. Driver installation was quick and easy with the Leopard DVD, and there I was, looking at Windows XP on my Mac. Feels weird. Cool thing is, Apple made sure to include all the cool little features they have in OS X for Windows. When you hit the volume control, the same graphic appears with the same sounds. I like attention to detail. So yes, Boot Camp is badass. FYI – Half-life 2 runs flawlessly.
• Safari 3 – Now I’ve been an avid Firefox user since before I picked up a Mac about a year ago. So I decided to give Safari 3 a try. For starters, I haven’t even played with the new features yet and I like it already. It’s compliant with the CSS I use on my sites, the tabbed browsing works great, AND it runs much faster than Firefox. I haven’t decided if I want to use Safari as my default yet. We’ll soon see.
• Mail – I ditched mail in 10.4 because it was slow and… boring. Not anymore. I linked up to Gmail using their newly supported IMAP feature, and it’s FAST. Very fast. RSS feeds are fast. The to-do feature is handy, and the way it links up with iCal is very cool. Good stuff.
• iChat – Haven’t played with this enough yet. I don’t really chat it up online much these days, but iChat is nifty.
• Spaces – Love it. I’m using it like crazy now. 4 spaces and NO clutter. NONE. I already feel more productive.
• Time Machine – Haven’t used this just yet. I will soon.
• Finder – Liking it so far. The search is retarded fast. Cover flow and the iTunes look that the Finder now bears is quick and intuitive. Loving it so far.
• Quick Look – This… is brilliant. Click on a file. Hit space bar. You’re now looking at the file without opening it. *tear* So fast and easy.
• The Dock – Meh. Seems to run slower than 10.4. Plus the stacks feature isn’t so great really. It reduces a click I guess, but… it’s alright I guess.

Overall a few little bugs crept  up, but so far I’m very happy with Leopard. I’m totally a Mac fanboy now, if I wasn’t already. “Rawrb, would you ever go back to Windows again?” you ask.

NO!