poll How will you install Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"?

[Shadrack]

I was wondering how people will go about installing Mountain Lion. I'm going to try an update install from Lion and hope for the best.

I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion last year, and the results weren't too bad to be honest. I eventually did do a clean install, but I had to because I upgraded my hard drive.

[Draken]

Clean Install, always, there?s no better and fail safe way ;)

[+virtorio MVC]

I'll try the Upgrade first and see how it goes. I upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard without any issues.

[Elliott]

Upgrade. I've never had trouble with upgrades in the past.

[Rudy]

I upgraded from Lion :blush:

I usually always do a clean install but at the time I didn't have a hard drive available to back up my data for a fresh install so I went for an update...went fine though

[PyX]

I upgraded from Lion, which I upgraded from Snow Leopard. Never really had a problem with upgrading with any of my Macs.

I can?t spend 10 hours reinstalling everything, and saving everything on Time Machine, doing a clean install and using my Time Machine backup gives the same result as upgrading. Not worth the time and effort.

[Menge]

I always clean install. Don't want to take any risks.

[mattburley7]

clean install.. i am a new mac user and first time installing a os x system.

[Vice]

Upgraded from Lion, had no problems at all.

[0sit0]

Installed it 2 days ago on my new osx86 machine. Good bye Windows! :D

[.Neo]

I'll be performing an Erase & Install.

[Tomoko]

I don't have a Mac but I would do it the same as any other OS, clean install. Always.

[vhane]

Did a clean install on the MacBook Air today. Was running out of disk space and decided to nuke a few things.

[BoDEAN]

upgrade from Lion GM

[Hurmoth]

Clean Install, always, there?s no better and fail safe way ;)

I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion and from Lion to Mountain Lion without any issues. I use to be of the belief that a clean install was the best option, but I think that both Microsoft and Apple have refined their operating systems to the point where an upgrade works just fine without any issues. Especially considering that Apple hasn't made any real "major" changes to the OS in a long time.

I'm not considering that a bad thing, mind you, it is actually good for stability. It is incredibly difficult to make major changes to an operating system when you have millions of users who depend for things to stay relatively the same. One of the reasons I feel Microsoft has made a major mistake with Metro. If you've only got a million or so users, making major changes is so much a problem, but when you've got half a billion or more, then you're making a major bet on something that may upset a large portion of your user base.

[+Seetheworldsecond Subscriber¹]

I'm upgrading from Lion at this very moment.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Clean install, never liked upgrades, they always leave crap sitting on the system in random places.

Just a few days ago I found an app from 2008 that hadn't been cleaned up during any system upgrades, I've got multiple random old versions of system libraries installed, etc.

[Wickedkitten Veteran]

I have upgraded ever since 10.1

[Xerxes]

Upgraded from Lion (which I upgraded from Snow Leopard respectively). Went very well! while my late '09 Mac mini is no beast, 10.8 runs very smooth (80% of the time) (Y)

[Glassed Silver]

Upgrade.

I've always upgraded my Mac OSs and did so with some Windows setups, too.

When I still was an all-Windows user I mostly didn't really care and picked whatever just worked without hassle.

When I got a new PC, I usually just moved my files and re-setup my settings in applications and the OS.

Nowadays, my Mac OSs haven't been reinstalled ONE SINGLE TIME, so my path is like this:

Tiger -> Leopard -> Snow Leopard -> Lion -> Mountain Lion

No problems whatsoever, better yet, problems I once had in Leopard (I think) have completely washed out after two upgrades and I'm sure hadn't I been this lazy back then, I could have fixed it myself.

Keeping Mac OS running nicely isn't that hard, it actually involves no work, unless you tested out many customizations that work on OS level.

I'd rather spend one or two nights removing any show stoppers myself than to reset up my Mac complete, which would include a horribly long list of re-applying settings (I don't trust any transfer manager, just using upgrades and installs from Time Machine backups.), setting up tweaks again, reinstalling scripts and folder actions, checking their working state and bug testing them again (peace of mind), etc etc.

Nah thanks.

Glassed Silver:mac

[KamiQuazi]

I Upgraded from Lion as I'm a new Mac user. I wouldn't know where to begin to do a new install.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, Apple made it hard with Lion and Mountain Lion, you need to extract a disk image out of the installer and copy the contents of that to a USB drive or DVD.

[.Neo]

I Upgraded from Lion as I'm a new Mac user. I wouldn't know where to begin to do a new install.

Since you're already here, reading the stickies in this subforum would be a very good start.