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Do you have the right stuff?
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Check the system requirements and make sure your hardware is ready
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At least an Intel Core 2 Duo Mac
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2 GB of RAM
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10 GB of free hard disk space
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Mac OS X 10.6.6 or greater installed
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Not ALL Lion features will work on all system. Likely older systems might have some GPU intensive things turned down
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How to check your specs
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Click the 'Apple' menu and choose 'About this Mac'
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Check version, processor, and memory
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Processor should say Core 2 Duo, Xeon, or anything in the Core iX series. Core Solo or Core Duo (without the "2") are out.
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MacTracker is another great app for getting specs
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Processor will be pretty much anything made late 2006 (after August) or later
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Mac Pro : August 2006 or later
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iMac: September 2006 or later
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MacBook Pro: October 2006 or later
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MacBook: November 2006 or later
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Mac Mini: August 2007 or later
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While 2 GB is the minimum for RAM, consider an upgrade to at least 4GB
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4 GB upgrade kits starting around $50 USD depending on model.
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Crucial
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Other World Computing
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Probably want more headroom than 10GB of space for install.
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OWC is a good place too if you need a new hard drive
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Is your software ready, too?
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Make sure to check that all apps are Universal or Intel, now PowerPC (Rossetta)
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Option + Click 'Apple' in menu and choose 'System Profiler…'
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Set 'View'-->'Full Profile'
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Under 'Software' in the left column select 'Applications'
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Sort by the 'Kind' column and look for 'Power PC'
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You can select an item in the main window and see it's 'Location' (path) in the bottom pane.
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Do the same thing for 'Extensions'.
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Also note that while some Applications might have been updated to Universal their installers might not have been. If you plan on clean installing apps you'll want to check that with the manufacturer.
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Particularly important for older print driver installers.
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Prepare the deck for launch
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Free up disk space
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Do a review of your Applications folder, Preference Panes, menubar items, login items, etc.
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Do you really need all that crud?
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I have a copy of AppFresh that seems to still work and can show 'Last Used', but hasn't been updated since 2009
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Finding large files
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Use Spotlight
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In Finder select your drive from the 'Devices'
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Choose File-->Find from the menu (Command+F)
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Next to 'Search:' select the drive instead of 'This Mac'
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From the search parameters drop down choose 'Other;' and then find and select 'Size' and click OK
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Set the options to 'Size' 'Greater than' and then set the value to find the larger files (say 100 - 500 MB or greater)
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Select an item and check the path at the bottom of the window to see it's location (View-->Show Path Bar)
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PathFinder
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Omni DiskSweeper
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Grand Perspective
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Disk Daisy
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WhatSize
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Update your stuff
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Run software update on Snow Leopard and make sure your OS and Apple apps are up to date
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Update your 3rd party apps, etc.
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RoaringApps has a community updated list
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Check and prep your drive
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Run Disk Utility and make sure there are no errors
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Could also use 3rd party tools to check
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Drive Genius
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Tech Tool Pro
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If there are issues detected with your drive
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See if you repair them
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For more serious issues you could try a tool like Disk Warrior
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Consider maybe replacing the drive. Not a bad idea if the drive is more than 3 years old.
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Note that most drive fail at either end of their life, so a new drive can also fail. That's why we backup.
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I also like to run maintenance like clearing the cache, rotating log files, etc.
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Cocktail
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Onyx
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Backup, backup, backup
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You should have at lest one (likely two) full backups of your current set-up.
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Time Machine counts
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Super Duper
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Carbon Copy Cloner
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Verify your backup
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Can you boot from it?
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Can you copy and read files off it.
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Confirm you can restore files form your Time Machine
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Disable whole disk encryption
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If you use File Vault or other whole disk encryption turn it off.
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Bring home your new kitty
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Lion will be purchased via the Mac App Store
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$29.99 USD (10 computers). $49.99 for Lion Server
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Must have Snow Leopard installed, so buy now if you need it.
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The download will be 4GB, so be prepared if you are on a slow connection
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May want to borrow a faster connection, get on public wi-fi to do the download.
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Other things to know
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Lion and the Mouse
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Will work fine with a mouse, but has new gesture based features that take advantage of the trackpad
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If you care about those and don't own a Macbook or Macbook Pro it might be time to invest in a Magic Trackpad
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Do you want to upgrade day 1?
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In addition to being a major new OS…
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The whole process for installing Lion is new.
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If you rely on your system for critical day to day tasks you may be wise to wait.
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If you have to have the latest and greatest consider getting a second drive to install and play with (dual boot).
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Emergency booting
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Lion will set aside an emergency boot partition that you can boot from
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There are early reports of ways to hack together a boot DVD or USb stick, but so far no Apple sanctioned way of doing this
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Clean install
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For now the process looks like doing a clean install of Snow Leopard, applying SL updates, and then applying the Lion upgrade over that.
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Be careful of Rosetta based app installers
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