Running 10.6.8 on an iMac.

Running the following windows and 27in screen is full and nicely ordered:

Firefox – editing website
Firefox – finding information and email
Finder
Downloads
Cyberduck FTP
Cyberduck FTP transfers
Textedit

I’d like to save this window setup so I don’t have to recreate it. Is there a way to do that?

Spaces! Create a new Space from Mission Control and drag the windows you want into it, then rearrange them how you like. So you have one Space for “normal” computer use and another Space for doing whatever task it is that needs the above window layout. I think the max number of Spaces is 18 or something.

You can then swap between spaces by 2-finger swiping on your mouse or CTRL+arrow left/right (or press F3)

interesting. i’ve just tried Spaces (forgot it was there!) but each space retains the exact location of the application window. and it won’t let me have Firefox in Space 1 and 3 in different places, it’s either 1 or 3 or All and always in the same place.

any other options? or am i not thinking round the Spaces problem?

Probably a Snow Leopard thing unfortunately. I only started using Spaces recently (on Mavericks) but I know it’s evolved a lot since SL. I can do exactly what you want – different browser windows on different Spaces, all totally separate.

Not tempted to upgrade? It’s free now!

Hmmm. Free to upgrade to Mavericks – from 10.6.8? Will all my software run ok?

Currently mostly using Adobe Creative Suite 4 with Photoshop,indesign,illustrator, plus MSOffice 2008 with word/excel/ppt.

What would I need to update?

Free to upgrade to Mavericks – from 10.6.8?

I had to buy Mountain Lion to upgrade… But then this was days before Mavericks came out.

Will all my software run ok?

Most will. The odd small piece of software (normally freeware) won’t, in my experience. I’d be surprised if CS4 doesn’t, but then you never know. 🙂

OK, not prepared to jump to Mavericks yet without more understanding of whether software will be ok.

So how do I solve my ‘save windows layout’ issue at the top of this thread??

I upgraded straight from SL to Mavericks recently with very little grief. It was free for me. I did it on a quiet Friday afternoon though so I had the weekend to fix anything that went wrong!

In the end I had 2 minor issues which I uncovered by looking at the error messages in the Console – the Calendar and some Adobe installation app both kept trying (and failing) to do something every few seconds which obviously slowed my iMac down to a crawl. I googled the errors and it turned out they were fairly common and solved with a few commands in Terminal. After that the computer was much faster than before.

CS4 should be fine… Photoshop CS4 works for me, for Illustrator I have CS6 though as that is what I use mostly. Office 2008 works fine also.

It was free for me.

Looks like I could have saved myself £50. Bottoms.

C’est la vie! I must admit it was a (pleasant) surprise when it came out & was free, wasn’t expecting that at all.