"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. Propeller-heads with IT know-how will no doubt hold up Linux as the better choice, and Vista has its devotees as well (and will probably have more when SP1 is widely available), but, 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. 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"

• Finder (revamped in Leopard)
• Quick Look
• Spaces
• Networking
• Time Machine
• Apple Mail
• Preview
• remotely connecting to another Mac
• iChat
• Cover Flow
• Disk Utility

"If you're in the market for a new machine, it's time to look seriously at a Mac, especially now that all Macs can run Windows along with OS X through the built-in Boot Camp feature that lets you install Windows and Leopard in separate partitions. Even better, third-party software from Parallels or VMware make it possible to run a Windows program in a window on the OS X desktop. It's even possible to set up OS X so that Word documents automatically open in the Windows version of Microsoft Word. At first I planned to wait until early 2008 before buying a new Mac, because I wanted to hold off until Microsoft issued its new Intel-native version of Office for the Mac, Microsoft Office 2008."

"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. 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."