Actually (with a sigh of relief) it’s not too bad

I have a 21.5”, mid-2011 iMac, on which I’ve been running Mavericks 10.9.5. Due to all the negative reviews, I completely skipped Yosemite, as well as the earliest versions of El Capitan. But I knew at some point I would want to make the upgrade to El Capitan. Several months ago, in preparation, I maxed out the iMac’s memory at 16GB ram. Prior to downloading from the App Store, I emptied trash, repaired permissions, and backed up to Time Machine. The download took 16 minutes (cable modem). Installation took 1 hour-14 minutes and went without a hitch. There were five apps that I then needed to update from the App Store.

I have been running El Capitan for one week, and things have been sailing along just fine. I had to make a number of adjustments to “Preferences” in several apps, and also found that adjustments were necessary in the “View” portion of pull down menus. Once I had made these minor setting changes, things looked and felt pretty normal. I also had to download and install new software and drivers for my scanner.

I think that the “look” of El Capitan is just fine and it seems that overall things are running much faster.

My only complaint at this point is the discontinuation of iPhotos, and it’s replacement by the new Photos app. I think Photos is a step backwards, but hopefully over time, I’ll get more used to using it. Fortunately, I have a late 2006 iMac (due to it’s age, it can’t be upgraded past Lion 10.7.5) running an older version of iPhotos which is still working just great, so there is some comfort in that.

Only 4 stars because of the Photos snafu.

Kaiotea about OS X El Capitan