Review: Can Leopard Take On Vista?

Backup: Time Machine is such a game-changer that no look at Leopard can afford to ignore this application. As soon as an external drive -- USB or firewire -- is plugged in, Time Machine will detect it and ask if it should be used as a backup drive. Time Machine can also be configured to use a network drive for backups. Once the backup device is identified, Leopard will make up-to-date backups of every file on the Mac on the external drive. It will also make a backup whenever there is a system change. The system makes hourly backups in the current 24-hour period, everyday for the past month, and each week for any files older than that.

The graphical interface is very easy to use and pleasing to the eye. Time Machine can also encrypt files.

Unlike most backup applications, the user does not have to close applications when making a restore. To recover a file or the contents of the entire system, users would select a date from a scrolling timeline which has snapshots of selected folders and files through their history. The selected content is then restored. Files in the trash can that day can also be recovered.

Vista's Backup and Restore sets backup times on a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. However, it doesn't back up any system changes. Even if it did, it doesn't have the slick feel that Time Machine has. Before seeing Time Machine, Backup and Restore seemed just fine. Now it feels lacking.

Advantage: Leopard

Networking: Leopard has made networking easier than in previous versions. Leopard can find all the shared folders on the network and other machines, both Windows and Mac, and drop icons automatically into the "Shared" section on the sidebar. This can be a little disconcerting when co-worker's folders appear without warning but quite convenient to have. Vista does the same for networked PCs, listing them under "Network" on Explorer's sidebar.

Connecting to Windows machines is not as seamless or consistent as it should be. Sometimes an icon would drop off the list, or report "Connection failed" when trying to establish a connection. To see the Windows machines properly, engineers had to restart the Mac.

Getting OS X to talk to Directory Services like LDAP and Active Directory used to cause many headaches for system administrators. Leopard now offers these administrators relief in the form of the Directory Utility application. The application has a summary screen that displays the Active Directory domain and the Open Directory Server to which the machine is bound. The application also creates NFS automounts to have certain network shares accessible to all users easily. Earlier OS X versions buried the setting where the name of the Windows workgroup could be entered. It is much easier to find under Leopard's System Preferences.

All these things are quite easy to do in Vista, of course. But now that Leopard can also do them, it's no longer a Vista advantage.

Advantage: Draw

Next: Leopard's built-in virtualization tools go beyond Vista