Upgrading to Snow Leopard

The choice of which hard disk to install onto was a difficult one, but we pushed ever onward.

You'd think this was "cup of tea time", but don't believe the 45 minutes time estimate just yet. OS X will load on some libraries and reboot itself into the upgrade process proper. You may need to help the installer close some applications in order to restart, so don't disappear down the street just yet.

Once the reboot has taken place, a screen exactly the same as before is presented, except this one has the ability to show an install log.

If you are comfortable in Linux or the BSDs, the install log can provide some insight into why that progress bar may or may not be moving.

Installation is complete and a second restart is needed.

Once the OS X desktop is back up and the "Welcome" video has played, this thank you dialog is shown. The update to Snow Leopard has been successful, but is everything as it was before?

It's time to freak out as it appears that Mail has forgotten the settings from Leopard. Though, reading the actual dialog shows you that the mailbox needs to be upgraded.

While waiting for emails to be updated, you can view what is new in Mail; and yes, it appears that Exchange support is the sole feature of note.

Before upgrading to Snow Leopard, be sure to realise that any plug-ins or extensions used in Safari, WebKit or Mail will more than likely break and may not have been updated to work with Snow Leopard.

If you are comfortable with that cost, then the process to upgrade Leopard is quite painless.