When I upgraded from 10.2 to 10.3, on over a dozen systems that were rock steady and have given no problems I disabled all the startup items and did a straight upgrade install. On the last system, just to see if I could tell the difference I did an archive install. The end result was the archive install took a little longer to get everything back up and running but other than that --
there was not and has not been any detectable difference in performance or stability between the upgrade and archive installs. That is to say that all the systems have been rock solid and I have not had an unexpected quit in any application, until iGetter 2 and Safari 1.3 starting butting heads after the 10.3.9 update. Removing iGetter until it is updated solved that problem however.
I suspect I will do the same thing when my Tiger DVD arrives. If your system has been stable and trouble free, I see no reason not to take the easy road and do an upgrade install. Just be sure to:
- Use Disk Utility, DiskWarrior, or TechTool Pro to be sure the file system on the target drive is in good health
- Run permission repair before and after the upgrade
- Disable all startup items before upgrading
- Remove all USB and firewire devices except the keyboard and mouse -- that includes firewire hard drives unless that is the target volume
- Most important of all have a recent and complete, preferably bootable, backup of the entire target volume. There is little chance this will be needed, but far better safe than sorry. You can't go back later and do the backup if a disaster should occur.
But that is just my opinion.
