No reason NOT to buy this if you have an Intel Mac!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good, solid release at a low price.  Upgrade is easy to do.

Cons: PowerPC Mac owners can't use this one.

The Bottom Line: 
Good, stable OS X upgrade that focuses on performance instead of "eye candy".  If you have an Intel based Mac, get this one!

Author's Review
I've been a Mac user since around 1999-2000, when I purchased a dual G4 processor based Mac tower, and I've enjoyed OS X ever since.

In my opinion, the Snow Leopard 10.6 operating system is a "no brainer" purchase for anyone owning an Intel processor based Mac.  Quite frankly, the average user will hardly see a difference between it and Leopard 10.5, but that's by design - because Snow Leopard is SUPPOSED to look and feel very similar.  (People with PowerPC based Macs can't run Snow Leopard, so unlike previous OS X upgrades, Apple will be selling both 10.5 and 10.6 side-by-side on store shelves.)  The reason Snow Leopard makes sense, though, is for all the "under the surface" improvements that will allow new programs to make better use of the multiple processor cores found in the Intel chips, and because Apple stripped out all the PowerPC code that's now only left in 10.5.  (Why take up disk space with all that code your Intel Mac never uses anyway?)

Of lesser importance, but still nice, are the little "tweaks" and changes made in 10.6.  As usual, you get a few new wallpaper backgrounds, and Apple fixed some issues in "Expose" so screens are better at staying put on multiple monitor configurations.  "Quicktime X" also makes its first apperance - but the old Quicktime 7.6 is still included as an optional install, since the "Pro" functionality of a registered copy isn't yet coded into the new one.  The look of the contextual menus that pop up when you right-click Dock icons has changed as well, to a white on charcoal appearance.

You'll also likely notice an improvement in startup and/or shutdown times over Leopard 10.5.

About the only "downside" users might experience is the occasional shareware or commercial application that's not compatible ... but I'd say 99% of this has been addressed by now.  Developers just needed a little time to update their software, when this first came out.  This far into the game, if your favorite program or peripheral still has no Snow Leopard support - it may be a sign that it's not really being actively supported anymore, and you might want to consider switching to an alternative product.