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Got 30 seconds? Read my summaries of the early reviews of Apple's new operating system in Thursday's papers. Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg, New York Times reviewer David Pogue, and USA Today's Ed Baig agree: Time Machine backups, yay. See-through menus, boo.

Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal: Faster, easier than Vista. For me, the marquee features are Time Machine that automatically backs up your entire computer in the background; Cover Flow and Quick Look, for rapidly viewing the contents of files; and new techniques that allow you to access other computers on your network or over the Internet with no technical expertise. The menu bar is now translucent, which can make it hard to see the items it contains. The new folder icons are less attractive than their predecessors.

David Pogue, The New York Times: Sleek, modern-looking desktop. Time Machine, Quick Look. Having virtual-screen software built in with so much polish makes a huge difference. A more polished Boot Camp lets you restart in Windows. Screen sharing lets gurus assist newbies from afar. iChat blue-screen effect. It also lets you display documents, presentations or movies to your videoconferencing buddies. The most serious misstep: See-through menus.

Edward C. Baig, USA Today: Time Machine. Cool video chat. Pretty e-mail: more than 30 stationery templates — baby announcements, party invitations — with integrated photo browser. You can create Notes and To-Dos inside Mail. It can detect addresses, phone numbers and dates inside a message. If you join the $100-a-year .Mac online service, you can access your machine remotely. I ran into snags trying to remotely connect from a hotel.