[rowelld]

so for all you people who have panther..i've done research on the new os. and i would just like to know if its really worth paying and upgrading?

[gorickey]

Yes.

[Daracle]

I love Panther.
I was also lucky enought to get it for $30 canadian with the Apple Up-To-Date program and I love it.

But to be totally honest I dont know how I would feel if I payed full price for it. I dont see all that much difference between Panther and Jaguar. Although I didnt have all that much time to play with either.

[mcsjgs]

I paid full retail (US$129) and don't regret it.

[Brass]

If you've got anything less than 10.2.0, then definitely YES, otherwise...

It depends on if you'd use the new features much or not. You can read all about the new features in many places, so find out if you think you'd like them or not, and if so, how much are they worth to you?

Personally, it was worth it (the up-to-date cheaper upgrade) for me just to get Fast User Switching. For my wife, she uses Exposé like a crazy woman, and uses it well. Additionally I'm a developer and needed to have it to make sure my applications continue to be compatible with the latest releases.

[Macpilot]

You don't have to pay $129 for it.

There are plenty of places to get it for less.

I paid $109 from MacConnection.

To answer if it is worth it? Well, that is in individual thing.

Add up all the features that are USEFUL or HELFUL to you see.

The whole "150 new features" is bullshit, AFAIK.

I would bet that nobody could name 50 features, let alone 150, but that is part of false advertising, unfortunately.

Nobody out there is getting the benefit of 150 new features!

I would say the average person might actually see 10 new features of Panther. But those features are of different importance to different people, understandably. Fast user swithing is just a gee-whiz thing for me, but for a person who frequently shares his Mac with another, it is worth more.

For me, overall system speed, Expose and sped-up Mail were worth it for me. I though Mail in Jaguar sucked. So far for me, I would say that all the OS X upgrades have been worth it. Expose speeds up your workflow quite a bit.

It is hard to say. Jaguar is still very nice. Panther sped up my girlfriend's iBook considerably.

Of course, it comes installed on all the new Macs so you need to determine if you can wait till your next Mac or not.

[dlefebvre]

I also paid full price and I don't regret it. It makes my computer life easier and since I installed it I decided to delay the purchase of a new Mac for a year. So yes, it's worth it.
Sure it's annoying to pay every year for an OS upgrade, but I consider it my little share to keep Apple healthy.

[mgehman]

Love it, but then I only paid educational pricing.

[theolein]

Paid the full price, waited until people had stopped suffering from the Firewire bug before installing it and 10.3.2 was out, and haven't regretted it at all since.

For me the most important things are:
1. The improved Finder (faster, selections are kept when moving to another window-10.2 perhaps had this, don't know-labels, spring loaded folders working properly in column view)
2. keyboard shortcuts and access to everything (I love this almost more than everything else)
3. Expose I find myself not using much but I like it.
4. OS is definitely more responsive on my hardware.
5. X11 works like a complete charm
6. Preview is fantastic compared to what it was in 10.2. fast and usable.
7. Mail is very much better.
8. I like the way the system prefs are now organised with the exception of the directory services being a bit hidden in a Microsoft kind of way.
9. Improved printing for me (Some have had problems here that they didn't before)
10. Much improved Terminal. More responsive and Bash as default is nice.

There, I managaed 10 of the top of my head!

YMMV of course. If you're more of an iApp person you'll find they're better as well (although the new iLife is supposed to be great but costs $$$), and if you're a designer you might find the Apps a tiny bit more responsive in 10.3 (Font handling is much iproved as well).

[Mr.Clicky]

Yes, yes and (guess what) YES!

[Moonray]

http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/195688/is-jag-worth-it/

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[typoon]

Yes it was definitely worth the upgrade for me. I paid full price and have not regretted it. Anyway the speed is one thing. Not having to pay for iChat AV and Expose and the new finder for me make it worth the price