Now that I have been using OS 9 for a few days, here are my impressions. First off, its a bit slower than OS 8.6, although that's usual as each OS version has more stuff than the previous one. I expect Mac OS X to have even more stuff and be potentially slower, if not for its solid multitasking base which will at least make it more responsive to user events. One problem I've seen with OS 9 is that switching applications takes a bit longer. This is especially noticeable with Eudora, which pauses for two to three seconds before drawing its windows. Come to think of it, other applications are fine, it's just Eudora with that problem. Eudora is also tends to hog everything for a second or two when it checks e-mail.

At the beginning I had problems with SoundApp freezing for a split second before continuing playback, making listening to my MP3s a bit annoying. I haven't experienced it in the last couple of days, so I guess whatever was causing it fixed itself. On a less related note, the new hard drive is also a bit more sensitive than the original one. Maybe using the Apple driver wasn't the best solution, but the drive does seem to stall occassionally. SCSI drives stall due to heat expansion, as they recalibrate themselves every few minutes (except for AV designed drives, which don't stall). I assume IDE drives are similar.

I'm using the Keychain to store my passwords. Quite cool. Once I'm logged in, I can mount Appleshare drives without entering my password. Eudora also uses the Keychain to store passwords, so does Internet Explorer. Netscape doesn't use the Keychain. The only problem with it is that it makes a chichi sound, like when you're taking out your keys. All the other sounds from my PowerBook have been set to low (including alerts) but the Keychain sound is quite loud. And there's no way to turn it off as far as I've seen. Annoying since Eudora accesses the Keychain every 15 minutes to check e-mail, so every 15 minutes this loud sound erupts from my earphones.

Software Update is pretty neat. I used it to upgrade the software that it checks for, which seems to be System software plus other programs installed with OS 9 like Microsoft IE and Outlook, Netscape, and Stuffit. The automated update seems to work fine, although it doesn't delete old program folders, yet deletes the contents of the folders. It updated Open Transport, and after that I kept crashing my Appleshare file server which didn't have OT updated. Once I updated OT on the file server it stopped crashing.

Multiple users I don't use, since not all applications work cleanly with it. I don't want to go through the trouble of hacking solutions to make sure apps get their preferences correctly. File Synchronization worked great for a while, but now it's broken. Actually it's something about a few folders that I'm trying to synchronize. When it tries to synchronize them it quits with an error type 11; and if I delete that entry and try to re-add it, it also quits. So I'm using SimpleBackup to do my backups until I decide on a better solution. I was trying to use File Synchronization because Speed Doubler no longer works.

The rest of my old software works on OS 9. I didn't reinstall Timbuktu, deciding to stick with VNC which is faster in version 3.3.3beta2. I'm also no longer using OkeyDokeyPro, since most of the old modal dialog boxes are no longer modal. Didn't install Natural Order, which is a nice extension which makes files with numbers in their name line up like normal, without prepending zeros to the number. But it's not likely to work with OS X so I don't want to get used to not having to number my files for a dumb filesystem.