Would Like to Upgrade to Leopard - Where Do I Begin?

Question

I would like to upgrade to Leopard, but I have a few concerns. My MacBook Pro was purchased in June 2006, so I think right when they were first available. I was running a trial version of Boot Camp, so about 40% of my hard drive is running on Windows XP Professional. I never use it and I'd like to uninstall this before I upgrade. How do I do this if Boot Camp is a trial version and I cannot run it any more?
Furthermore, I have a lot of software on the OS side of my hard drive that I really can't uninstall because I don't have any discs for it. This includes MS Office 2004, Adobe CS3, and Final Cut Pro 5. I'm afraid these program won't work if I upgrade to Leopard. Is this right?
I think the first step should be getting an external hard drive and backing up all the files I want to save, including programs. If I do this, will I be able to run those programs again on Leopard? Can anyone recommend the best way to proceed from here? Thanks.

Answer 1

Hey again. In regards to Adobe CS3, the pdf document http://www.adobe.com/support/products/pdfs/leopardsupport.pdf describes Adobe's support for Leopard. As noted in the document, the disk installation of CS3 may not function correctly under 10.5 but there are updates available that can increase compatibility.
Creating a clone of your hard drive is a very good idea. If you find your programs don't work under Leopard or the Upgrade installation is somehow botched, you can just restore from the clone backup. If you do decide to remove the Boot Camp partition using Disk Utility, be very very careful that you don't erase your main partition. Remember, you'll have to use the Leopard Disk Utility if you want to repartition your hard drive without erasing everything. Make sure you read all the dialog boxes thoroughly to make sure that the OS X volume will not be erased. It'd be a really good idea to make the clone before messing with your hard drive.
Unfortunately none of us here know exactly what the Snow Leopard pricing plan will be. It's likely that there won't be any upgrade plan for Tiger to Snow Leopard so you may have to pay the full retail price. If you consider that upgrading from Tiger to Leopard is $129 (retail price of Leopard) then Leopard to Snow Leopard is probably $29, as opposed to getting just Snow Leopard for (probably) $129, it'd be cheaper to wait. But that's just my opinion, if you want to get Leopard before Snow Leopard, go ahead.
In regards to how big of an external hard drive to get, first let me remind you that you'll need a drive at least as big as your internal drive to make a bootable clone backup. Then you may want to consider that if you decide to use the drive with Time Machine after upgrading, you'll need a drive at least two or three times the size of your internal. If you also want to use your external drive for storage, you could partition it into some space for Time Machine and some space for storage of files. Note that it is generally recommended that you have a completely separate drive for Time Machine, to increase disk performance and reduce wear on the drive.
Good luck with your upgrade!
Jeremy A.
Tekserve Intern
As an intern at Tekserve, I may receive financial compensation for my recommendations and links.