PC Magazine reviews Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard: ‘By far the best consumer OS available’

“After three months with Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard Version 10.5, I have three main things to say about it. First: Despite minor problems, it’s by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value—like truly automated backups, document and spreadsheet preview images in folders, and notes and to-do lists integrated into the mail program,” Edward Mendelson reports for PC Magazine.

“For the average user, Leopard is the most polished and easiest to use OS I’ve tested. Second: Leopard started out with a generous share of first-version glitches, but almost all of them have now been resolved by the second of two automated updates, which brings Leopard up to version 10.5.2,” Mendelson reports.

“Finally, Leopard is extravagantly overdressed for the jobs that it’s designed to do, and its pervasive eye-candy starts out looking dazzling but soon becomes distracting. Fortunately, from the beginning, the OS started out with options that let you put it on a low-eye-sugar diet, and the latest update has even more,” Mendelson reports.

“Leopard again raises the question of whether to switch from Windows to a Mac. I’ve found Vista to be a major disappointment that tends to look worse the more I use it. I still use Windows XP for getting serious work done in long, complicated documents. But OS X is easier to manage and maintain and I vastly prefer OS X to Windows for Web-browsing, mail, and especially for any task that involves graphics, music, or video,” Mendelson reports.

MacDailyNews Take: Macs are perfectly capable of getting “serious work done in long, complicated documents.” Mendelson is writing for PC Magazine and is merely throwing his readers – the Windows sufferers – a bone. After this review, they need something, however meager it may be, to assuage the brutal assault their OS of “non-choice” has just taken. As we all know, most Mac users have slummed it with Windows; often by force in school and/or at work. Mac users have made a conscious technology choice and are therefore better informed than most Windows sufferers. Mac users execute “serious work done in long, complicated documents” daily.

“Leopard performs all such tasks even better than previous versions did—and Leopard is the only OS on the planet that works effortlessly and intuitively in today’s world of networked computers and peripherals. Leopard is far from perfect, but it’s better than any alternative, and it’s getting harder and harder to find good reasons to use anything else,” Mendelson reports.

Full review, 4.5 out of 5 stars, here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Island Girl” for the heads up.]