Well, I've finally got back on the technology curve following the delivery of a 24in iMac, complete with Leopard.

So far, the experience has been pleasant. Having to reinstall all the software I use is a bit of a chore, but my practice is to make this an on-demand job. So I've put Microsoft Office, Skype and a few other third-party applications onto the iMac, but pretty much everything else will wait until I need them.

My rationale is that my computers collect a lot of clutter, so buying a new machine or being forced into reinstalling an operating system is a very good opportunity to start with a clean slate.

I'd heard complaints from my colleagues about how slowly Office runs on Intel-based Macs, so I was a bit apprehensive. Maybe I'm less demanding than they are, because my overall impression is that overall it's at least as fast as it was on my iMac G5 (Office is still PowerPC only), and some operations - especially opening HTML emails and searching the Entourage database - are noticeably quicker.

Still, Office 2008 is due in two months, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. I'll be giving some serious thought to dropping Entourage in favour of the standard Mail application in order to take advantage of Time Machine. Backing up a multi-gigabyte database file several times a day isn't a great strategy.

I am disappointed that Skype still isn't available in a fully Leopard-compatible version. The problem is to do with the way Skype checks itself for modifications, which clashes with the way Leopard signs programs to allow them through its application firewall.

A friend put me onto the idea of running Skype directly from the (read-only) disk image file each time. This prevents Mac OS X from signing the application, so it is registered afresh each time it is launched. Leopard is happy; Skype is happy. I generally put the system to sleep overnight so this is a minor irritation but I'll be happier when a proper fix is delivered.

One problem with my progressive installation strategy is that it's possible to overlook some dependencies. For example, I couldn't at first work out why Entourage was giving me the beachball once a minute, and then putting up a message about a server not being found. After all, it had worked fine the previous day.

I eventually twigged that it was due to the Mailing List X script that I use to help make sure my messages to certain mailing lists are sent from the right mail account. I'd copied the script itself along with the rest of the Microsoft User Documents folder, but Entourage was still looking for it on the old machine. That was fine while the two machines were connected across the network, but the new iMac couldn't locate the script when the G5 was asleep. Reselecting the scripts used by my rules and schedules fixed the problem.

The iMac itself is proving a joy to use. I'm still figuring how to make the best use of the extra screen space, and concerns about reflections from the glossy screen have so far proved groundless.

I was also a little worried about how I'd get on with the slimline aluminium keyboard, as I've been having problems with repeated characters on the iMac G5's original white keyboard and a third-party keyboard that I tried in its place. So far, so good.