Amid the excitement about Apple’s new operating system, Snow Leopard, was the gut feeling that it might be better to wait on the sidelines until some of the bugs had been worked out – something that was cemented by the fact an update is already available.

But being an Apple disciple, I decided to take the Snow Leopard plunge after finally being able to get my hands on the software. Fortunately, I also bought an external hard drive to back up data just in case Snow Leopard misbehaved. That said, I fully expected Snow Leopard to work like a charm on my two-year-old, Intel-powered MacBook.

So after backing up some key files, I popped the Snow Leopard CD into the MacBook, and waited for the magic to happen. For whatever reason, the installation failed. Not only that but I was left with a blue screen of death rather than gold old Leopard.

After trying a few fixes, it soon became apparent that I had been badly mauled by Snow Leopard. As a result, I had to take my MacBook to an Apple repair shop where they discovered the hard drive was corrupted. Bottom line: It means a $35 piece of new software has turned into a $200+ repair job, including a new hard drive.

To be fair, my MacBook had been acting weird recently. The notorious spinning, multi-colored beach ball had been a steady presence. It may have had to do with the fact I had loaded my MacBook with a lot of software, and then tried to clean things up to prepare for Snow Leopard by uninstalling a bunch of software and doing some maintenance.

My troubles may also have to do with the fact I’ve really used and abused my MacBook over the past couple of years. It has been a dependable and reliable workhorse, particularly this year as I’ve grown my consulting business, and hauled it to a lot of meetings.

At the end of the day, I’ve learned some valuable lessons:

1. Back up all of your data on a regular basis – something I have now learned the hard way.
2. Try to be as nice as possible to your laptop – both in terms of the software you put on it, and the physical abuse it takes.
3. When it comes to new software releases, be patient. Better to wait and let someone else suffer through growing pains than jump on the bandwagon right away.

At the end of the day, there was a silver lining to being clawed by Snow Leopard. It gave me an excuse to finally pull the trigger on a MacBook Pro, while giving my daughter a MacBook. Short-term pain but long-term gain.