10.1.5 --> 10.2

[apaterso]

Other than upgrading for the sake of upgrading. What are the REAL benefits to 10.2. Please don't tell me about iChat and the new Mail program. I really don't find iChat a compelling (sp) reason to spend ~$110. I am running 10.1.5 on a new 15" flat iMac and don't have any problems with it. Seems pretty fast and stable. Please help me see the light in upgrading.

Andy

[Craig R. Arko]

I'm going to move this to the OS Xperiences forum, since it seems to be right up that alley.

For me so far, the best things I've seen so far are the improved Finder, Get Info and Networking items. Performance improvements, on a B&W G3/350 without QE support, have been modest. Overall reponsiveness is better, with a lot fewer beachballs. And the toning down of Aqua has reduced my desire to skin the thing as much. Memory leaks in Classic seem to be fixed.

If (when) I have use of Rendezvous, Bluetooth, VPN, InkWell, ODBC, Open Directory and QE some time, this will be a much larger upgrade for me than it has been so far.

Until you want those technologies it's a tossup to justify the $129 if 10.1.5 is doing it for you. In your case Quartz Extreme may make it worth it.

[Phil St. Romain]

Lots of expanded System Preferences, as well, like the ability to set various degrees of font-smoothing, a digtal hub preferences now (CD/DVD pref.), really beefed up Sharing preferences, which makes it a snap to share files with PC users, or set up different kinds of firewall protection. Energy Saver now allows for settings when running on the battery. Speech Recognition, Universal Access, and others have more options as well. It's caught up with and even surpassed OS 9 in most areas--still lagging in a few, however.

As Craig mentioned, speed boosts are noticeable, the Finder updates quickly, scrolls quickly, resizes better, etc. Just overall more responsive.

Sherlock has almost morphed into Watson - - not quite, yet.

Network performance seems much more responsive. E.g., finding shared volumes on a network is a snap; iDisks mount almost right away, and even tasks like downloading from the net seem faster and more reliable.

The iApps are also nice. Even if you only use Mail and Address Book, you'll be pleased, I'm sure.

Lots of raving about the calculator.

Even a little ui tweak for the Terminal to set up split-screen.

That's a partial list, so far, and I'm still looking around.

[lerkfish]

It's definitely faster, though to what degree I don't know definitively. It feels about 15-20% faster for me on my G4/400 yikes, but its a hard comparison to make with only one machine.
A lot of the newer things don't apply to me, but what I like is:
1. increased speed and apparent stability.
2. better calculator
3. MUCH better classic performance, a must for me with some programs not yet ported OSX native.
4. minor tweak improvements to things like disk utility...
5. MUCH better connection peer to peer with my son's PC. no longer need SMB browser.

so...there's more, but I guess I'm saying that to me its an improvement, but if your money is tight enough that 129 bucks is going to put you in the red, I wouldn't necessarily upgrade at this point.

[oeholmen]

It's all the little things... Faster networking is my favourite, and windows fileharing. VPN... Finding a file is no longer done by Sherlock. Thank God! I love it!