Upgrading to Leopard from Tiger was a bad idea. Upgrading OS’s is generally a bad idea. All the rubbish that you had with your previous OS comes with it. It’s like giving Brittany a facelift. She’s pretty now, but still messed up inside.

So it wasn’t a good idea to upgrade from Tiger, for many reasons. The strongest being the fact that this was my first real Mac, and I had installed and uninstalled hundreds of applications which left their mark one way or another on the system. A fresh install was the way to go.

The install was so painless, I had to pinch myself just to make sure I was awake. Unlike the Windows XP installations, I didn’t have to answer 50 questions, including “What is your inside leg measurements”

Also the backing up of user files from the previous OS X version was, as we say in UK, a doddle (i.e. easy). One folder to backup “~/Library” and Robert’s your fathers brother.

If you so wish, you could backup a few of your applications (I did all of them) to reduce the time needed later on when you’re trying to find them on the net. You’ve already backup their preference files, you’ve pretty much got it all.

That’s it. It was installed, applications moved from the backup drive to the new location, a few preferences files here and there, and I was done. Some apps however decided they needed their serial numbers again, which wasn’t an issue as they were all in emails. One set of applications didn’t work at all, and it was the Adobe set, and you’re probably not shocked, because I wasn’t.

So the list of applications I need after a fresh install on the Mac are as follows:

1Password Adium Apple Aperture AppZapper BluePhoneElite 2 ChickenVNC Gift-it (Dashboard widget) Hazel Little Snitch MarsEdit Perian Pixadex Quicksilver Saft for Safari Senuti Skitch (You’ll need an invite. I have a few if you want any) TextExpander TextMate TVShows UnRarX Xslimmer

Those are the ones I use most often. Of course I install FireFox and a host of other free apps, but they aren’t essential.