The OS X Beta Survival Guide

from Macworld Magazine On Line is comprehensive and should be useful for those taking the OS X plunge. Especially helpful is the section called "Where did everything go?" Our main peeve, but a minor one at that, with Aqua is the reorganization of where things are and, in some cases, renaming them. For example, "Get Info" is now called "Inspector".

Some of Macworld's installation advice, however, is counter to the actual Apple recommendation and the experience of others. For example, Mac OS X PB and Mac OS 9.0.4 should be installed on the same partition of the same drive to work together most efficiently in Classic mode. Two systems in the same partition has always been a no-no with Mac OS 9 and earlier and Macworld continues the older advice of a separate partition for Mac OS X PB. For added security, the main hard drive could be formatted with Drive Setup into two HFS+ partitions. One partition with Mac OS X PB, Mac OS 9.0.4 and X applications and the other holding Mac OS 9, pre-X applications, utilities and data. This is the way I have been using Mac OS X DP4. Others prefer more partitions just for applications and data.

For ATA (non-SCSI) hard drives, which most G3 and G4 Macs have, the drive upon which Mac OS X PB is installed must be a master drive and not a slave, or secondary, drive. A potential alternative with added security is to use a separate ATA controller PCI card, e.g. Acard or Sonnet Tempo, with its own master hard drive for Mac OS X PB and Mac OS 9.0.4. When Mac OS X PB arrives we will check to see if Mac OS X PB is installable and bootable with this alternative.