Chesapeake Systems' Service Department recently had a tech meeting where we discussed the ups and downs of Apple's recently released operating system in the real world environments of our own clients.

Overall, the reviews were positive and all contributing technicians seemed to feel that OS 10.5 was a good, solid, operating system with less of a need for patches than some previous releases.

Here are some details on what our technicians discussed this past week about Mac OS 10.5:

1) The best install is a clean install. If you are transitioning from an older version of OS X, the best way to do it is via an Archive Install with a manual incorporation of any needed old settings. The third best installation is an Archive Install saving old user settings.

2) Archive Installs that save old user settings will usually result in bad printer settings, repetitive 'first time launch' dialog boxes, and unindexed Apple Mail inboxes.

3) Everyone, no matter how they get to 10.5, should clear out all their old printer settings and create new ones. Note that many printers that rely upon separate print servers may not yet be compatible. An example of that is the Konica-Minolta Bizhub.

4) Adobe Acrobat's PDF Printer does not appear to work in 10.5

5) There are no released AJA drivers for 10.5 for that company's AV equipment.

6) There is no Classic environment at all in Mac OS 10.5, so users who are still relying upon OS 9 programs should either upgrade their old programs or postpone this transition until they can leave those old programs behind.

And we've gathered much more information that we'll be using to provide support and services for our clients.