<strong>The Launch</strong>

Uneventful.  Not like the Leopard launch.  More like the launch of a new iLife or iWork package... but hey, I got it.

<strong>Installation</strong>

Went flawlessly on all 3 Macs... and there were reduced hard-drive usage.  From what I have heard, mostly from not installing unused printer drivers... in the past, there would be tons of printer drivers installed for absolutely no reason at all... but many of the apps were slimmed down (probably because they went from "universal" to "Intel" i.e. they stripped out any PPC code...).

<strong>Hard Drive Reduction
</strong>

MacBook (Aluminum): 10.4 GB
iMac: 12.0 GB
MacBook (Black): 7.8 GB

That's not too bad!  Any regained hard drive space is always appreciated.

<strong>Speed</strong>

This is apparently in startup/shutdown and waking up the laptops from sleep mode.  Not drastic, but definitely noticeable.  I think most of the speed improvements are yet to come when developers optimize their applications for the new technologies (64-bit, Grand Central Dispatch, and Open CL).  The iMac and MacBook (Aluminum) are 64-bit and can take advantage of that technology, only the MacBook (Aluminum) can take advantage of OpenCL but they all can take advantage of GCD.  So, while a nice upgrade now, it will really shine in the future.

<strong>IU Enhancements</strong>

None that are really apparent except for Quicktime X.

<strong>Overall</strong>

It was worth the upgrade.  49.99 for up to 5 machines (I used 3... that is 16.67 per machine...) and no major issues on my machines.  There will be still applications that will have to update for compatibility reasons and then new versions to take advantage of the OS... I believe that the future looks bright for Snow Leopard.