Leopard OS X and Vista Clean Install

I've been sitting quietly on the sideline watching the Leopard drama unfold for a good three weeks now. I've gotten a copy of Leopard but decided to wait it out a bit before quickly updating my MBP. Just incase there are some horror stories after the upgrade. After reading some reviews online and talking to some co-workers, I've decided against the "upgrade" route and decided to go for a clean install. The process was simple, first I used Bootcamp Beta to wipe out the Vista partition I had and then used disk utilities from Leopard bootup to erase and format the HDD to a clean slate.

One little trick to install, skip the "checking the stability of DVD" as you begin to install the OS. This process takes about 20 minutes and its a waste of time. I took my chances and skipped at 15% into the checking process. Total installation took approx. 35 minutes and the end result was fabulous. I checked for software update right away and re-installed all of the applications. One little glitch that I noticed was while launching Google Earth for the first time, the graphic beneath the mouse cursor was blank. This went away after I re-launched the app.

Re-installing Windows Vista was not as easy. Bootcamp partitioned my hardrive but Windows refused to install on it because it was not done in NTFS. I had to reformat on the fly (taking any chances of wiping out the bootloader reference) and proceed. After the install, I didn't realize that Leopard OS X disc is needed to update the drivers (in my defense, while in Bootcamp beta, the assistant would ask you to prepare a driver disc, while in this case, they just partitioned and asked for installation disc). During this process, the laptop gave me a "blue screen of death" towards the end of Bootcamp driver installation. My second attempt was better.

In the end, I was able to get everything up and running the way I wanted to be and I do appreciate some of the new features of Leopard (Stacking, Spaces, Cover Flow Finder, iChat improvement, etc.). I think it sucks that Leopard doesn't come with the standard iLife 08 package as my Tiger disc did.