Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7: Round One

Its easier than ever to put Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard head to head because they will be launching within a month of each other. This brings up the question: which is better? Hmm…

Windows 7 uses basically the same foundation as Windows Vista while fixing the insides and making it look better while Snow Leopard focuses more on the core.

Price and Availability

The obvious winner is Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard is shipping in September for an upgrade price of only $29, Windows 7 does not come out until October 22 and there are roomers that it could be more expensive than Vista.

Performance

Windows 7 are designed to chew up less system resources. Apple promises that Snow Leopard will give you back 6 GB of Hard Drive space because Apple got rid of all PowerPC code. Microsoft has not talked about how much less space Windows 7 will take up, but they have came up with innovative ways for drivers to take up less space.

Browser

Internet Explorer 8 is by far the best browser Microsoft has ever made but Safari is much better at handling JavaScript which is important now of days.

Networking

Networking is much easier in Windows 7. You can now create a home network without the need to click buttons a few million times, and the new user interface makes much more sense.

Backup

Time Machine is awesome because it just works. Backups in Windows 7 is much better as well, and its written in PLAIN ENGLISH.

Dock vs. Taskbar

I personally think that the new taskbar is much better. Jump lists help when doing common tasks and Aero Peek is a nice touch. Little changes like Aero Snap, Shake and Peek also helped.

Snow Leopards UI is pretty much the same as Leopard, but it manages to improve in Exposé. You can do much more with the dock now, so you can easily drop files in whatever app window you want to. Exposé, my "I would die without it" feature in Leopard, now arranges windows in a neat grid, rather than scattering them across whatever space is available. Stacks is actually useful now too, since they're scrollable and you can look in folders within stacks in Snow Leopard.

Backgrounds

Windows 7 backgrounds are much better. I'm kind of tired of the OSX space background, its getting old.

Battery Life

Windows 7 supposedly improves notebook battery life by a minimum of 11 percent. On the Snow Leopard front, well, um, all of the new Macs have much bigger batteries? Since Apple didn't drop a slide at WWDC telling the whole world, we can presume there isn't any benefit.

Media

Windows Media Player can handle pretty much any format you throw at it. The UI is a little complex because its trying to do too much. It has some nice tweaks like play to, which will stream media to any compatible devices on your network. Quick Time 10 isthe same except the new logo. Like Windows Media Player, Quick Time can can handle almost all major formats.