[DM-MUG] Upgrading Jaguar to Panther on my Office machines...

[Victoria L. Herring]

With some trepidation on Saturday I upgraded my two main machines and 
want to explain how it went.  So far (knock on wood) it went just 
fine.  I had upgraded already on my 2nd older Cube and my 15" TiBook 
without incident but these being office machines it was a bit more of 
a nailbiting experience.

1.  First and foremost, I used the precautions from MacFixit.com to 
make sure all would be fine and my machines were ready to go.  I had 
also bought a $5 ebook from TidBits, "Take Control of Upgrading to 
Panther" which is the best $5 I've ever spent.  First, it walks you 
thru all the issues that are out there and discusses them in helpful 
language from personal experience, good and bad.  I had a question 
about my copy (downloaded sit and expanded pdf) and emailed the 
editors and voila, in an hour I had a personal copy emailed to me in 
fine form.  Very impressive.  You can download at 
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol - there's also a 'Customizing' one 
I got but that is for later.

2.  I deleted log out items.  I fixed permissions and also ran 
Diskwarrior to clean up things.

3.  Unfortunately, LaCie's website is down this weekend for repairs, 
but I had checked there already ref. the Firewire issue == I have 
since decided that until I am comfy with the situation, I'll just 
keep my FW harddrives unconnected.  They're spare and backup and it's 
okay for now.

4.  I backed up with Retrospect as usual and then used 
CarbonCopyCloner to save a disk image of each machine to one of the 
FW HDs.  Then I did an Archive and Install, without incident.  After 
which I repaired permissions yet again.

5.  my iMac is the less used of the two machines (the other is my 
personal souped-up Cube which has lots of my own geegaws on it) and 
so once it was installed, I just sat down and played with it a bit == 
set up Preferences first then created an account for my paralegal 
(watching the Accounts change is really an amazing thing, worth it 
for the entertainment value) and then went thru opening and playing 
with each of the applications on that machine.  All seemed to work 
just fine (I haven't tried Retrospect due to the FW HD fear I have, 
yet) -- I did have to Add New Printer but that was fine and not a 
problem.  As I'm a bit more behind in testing my Cube installation, 
and the scanner and color inkjet are connected to it, as is my Palm 
etc., that's today's plan.

6.  So, my iMac is up and running just fine and i'm sending this from 
my Cube = I just need to work my way thru the many more apps. on this 
computer and some of the known issues (Palm syncing etc).

I loved Panther before and do so now and am (knock on wood!) looking 
forward to being able to use it on all my machines.
-- 
Victoria L. Herring, Des Moines, Iowa - Owner, 
http://www.JourneyZing.com - Your Source for Customized Trip & Travel 
Research and Attorney at Law, for civil rights,  discrimination and 
employment law matters: http://www.herringlaw.com.  Ph. 515/255-4475.