Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard

[deltadog03]

I don't have any real expierance with snow leopard, but I can tell you that windows 7 is by far the best OS made from gates land. I have a hardcore mac fanatic buddy who has windows 7 on his macbook and looooves win7. With that said, I am gonna try to get leopard on my desktop pc. I heard its not that hard of a process to dual boot them.

[thecheda]

No Visual Studio 2008 for Snow Leopard. Decided to run Win 7 on Parallels. Was smooth, and was surprised.

[djrobsd]

Originally Posted by Trek2100

Excuse me, you obviously have not checked the web or Microsoft's website. There is NO direct upgrade to Win 7 except from Vista. For any OS prior to Vista you have to save your data and perform a fresh install (wipes your drive). After the install you have to re-install all of your software and data. Check the upgrade chart on MS's website.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...derations.aspx

That is totally untrue. As long as you are running ntfs you do not have to reformat your drive. I just installed 7 over xp last night and it moved my xp to windows.old. I can actually still boot into my previous windows install.

[ImperialX]

Originally Posted by djrobsd

That is totally untrue. As long as you are running ntfs you do not have to reformat your drive. I just installed 7 over xp last night and it moved my xp to windows.old. I can actually still boot into my previous windows install.

It's sorta like Snow Leopard. It says you can only update from Leopard, but you can easily update from Tiger.

[roadbloc]

Originally Posted by BongoBanger

Sure because it's totally reasonable to upgrade about a billion PCs in four weeks.

seems so.... me, college, highfields studio's, all my mates with mac's and satellite arts all upgraded to snow leopard within the first week of it's release.

[DMann]

Originally Posted by roadbloc

seems so.... me, college, highfields studio's, all my mates with mac's and satellite arts all upgraded to snow leopard within the first week of it's release.

This seems to be in line with Snow Leopard's fairly impressive 23% adoption rate, to date.

Not a bad start, out of the gate.

[Trek2100]

Originally Posted by djrobsd

That is totally untrue. As long as you are running ntfs you do not have to reformat your drive. I just installed 7 over xp last night and it moved my xp to windows.old. I can actually still boot into my previous windows install.

Question, did you have to re-install your software under Win 7? If not, perhaps you should tell Microsoft they are misleading the public.

[BongoBanger]

Originally Posted by roadbloc

seems so.... me, college, highfields studio's, all my mates with mac's and satellite arts all upgraded to snow leopard within the first week of it's release.

Sure. Different market though.

90% of Windows 7 sales will be driven by OEM purchases so I wouldn't expect Windows 7 to be anywhere near to, say, 50% for a coupe of years yet. After all, it took XP three to four years to get there so not seeing this as any different.

On the other hand, you could say that it's disappointing for Apple that about a quarter of their customers feel Leopard is so awful that they have to upgrade to Snow Leopard straight away. Of course, that's probably nonsense in much the same way as expecting everyone who owns a Windows PC to upgrade straight way too.

[djrobsd]

Originally Posted by Trek2100

Question, did you have to re-install your software under Win 7? If not, perhaps you should tell Microsoft they are misleading the public.

If you can provide links to web sites and ads from Microsoft claiming contrary please do so, I've never seen them say that you wouldn't have to reinstall your programs or that the upgrade would be "smooth". Yes, I did reinstall everything, and my computer runs about 50% faster now without all those unwanted programs I had on there before!

[jimmyjoemccrow]

Originally Posted by Jason Beck

In my 12 years of windows experience, installation of windows is usually hit or miss. You are almost always fiddling with drivers, trialware or shareware, depending on what form of system restore you are using.

Thats not my experience in 15 years of installing Windows. Most of the time the drivers are on a CD with the hardware, or failing that on the manufacturer's website. Problems can occur if the hardware is really old and support discontinued, but in cases like that its usually worth upgrading anyway. I usually just do a fresh install of Windows over all that OEM crap and install a free antivirus.

If you strictly care about gaming:
"Apple refuse to make a machine that is good for gaming that isn't a workstation, and even if I were to buy that machine I would still need Windows to play games. So in the end my loyalties have to be with Microsoft because Apple just don't give a **** about me."

Then I guess you are in the wrong camp. The Mac platform is not for hardcore gamers.. It is for people who care about stability, productivity,
and good ergonomics. We want our computers and laptops to work,
and work out of thebox. Without silly Norton reminders or various buggy
toolbars installed.

That is my point. Macs are niche, and yet continually Mac owners will rubbish PCs, even when Apple do not provide an alternative. PCs cover more than Apple's niche.

We like to browse the web and not worry about what is installing behind closed doors. Nothing like waking up to a brand new "weatherbug" icon or
"shopper pro" in the bottom left corner of your taskbar

Get back to 2009. That sort of thing hasn't happened on Windows since XP service Pack 2.

Windows based machines can really be killer at games. So can Macs, _if_
you spend the money. Or are you saying a Mac Pro 3,000$ computer isn't a good gaming machine? Last I saw, the thing ran _anything_ we threw at it.
High frames too.

Apple is catering to you. Good products just cost a lot of money sometimes.
IMHO the reason why Macs are dominant in our school system is because of the very reasons I gave. They work, the kids will have a harder time f*cking them up, and the school software and other software works better.

Just my h.o.. I've used windows for a decade, so I am entitled to it.

A Mac machine for gaming will cost me 3 times as much as a PC for gaming and I will still need to use Windows on it, so why bother with a Mac? Again the point is that Apple are niche, so Apple fanbois should stop bashing PCs for filling the gaps in Apple's range.

Originally Posted by mac2x

Maybe because some of us actually know what we are talking about when we complain about archaic Windows junk like the Registry? Seriously, Windows would be a lot better if MS would just bite the bullet and redesign the core parts of the OS to strip out the old stuff.

Actually when Mac users talk about the Registry I can usually tell that its just stuff they have read on forums like these. It takes an inordinate amount of installing/uninstalling software to truly make any difference to the size of the registry. And what if Microsoft did bite the bullet and completely redesign their OS? Would all the businesses who wrote their software for Windows updgrade and rewrite or just stick with what they have? Look what happened when Vista was released with a new driver model. Third parties were incredibly slow to produce drivers, contributing to the bad rep Vista got. After the first service pack and drivers were sorted, Vista was a reliable OS, and ran better than XP on modern hardware. Yet companies stuck with XP because it had been around for so long they had got everything working and didn't feel the need to change.

Granted, there are people who buy Apple for the snob appeal (a sad affliction of most any high end product). But all the Mac users I know personally are people who know what they are doing. They chose Mac for a reason, that reason being Unix. And it's a lot less hassle than most of the flavors of Linux that you have to choose from otherwise. Not that Linux is bad, but it's a good bit more work in most cases since you have to get drivers and all that.

Great, but Apple refuse to license their OS and they only provide a limited range of hardware, outside the price range of many people. They are not catering to as wide a range of needs as PCs do.

Perhaps because there's nothing wrong with the basic principles of Leopard's UI? I'd be hard pressed to name an operating system that could boast even comparable UI to Leopard.

Windows 7 does look very nice, and I'd say it is the best looking Windows yet, and probably the most intuitive once you get used to the differences between XP and Vista/7. For me, though, Aero is way too glitzy and overdone. I especially dislike the way new windows have a sort of "smack you in the face" animation when they open. Gives me a headache. Snap is a good feature, but for me it's less important than the excellent Exposé/Spaces functionality of Leopard. After all, it's not that much trouble to put your windows side-by-side on a 24" display.

There wasn't really much wrong with Vista's UI either, but I presume that to clear as much of the stigma of Vista as possible they gave it an overhaul. I could do without the extra thick outline Aero gives its windows but overall I like it, especially the themes. You can define a set of wallpapers to rotate, a different colour for the taskbar and wimdows, set the amount of translucency and even choose a range of sound schemes. Contrast this with OSX choice of grey or grey with blue sliders. And what happened to Mac sounds? I used to love that little Eep! sound. I think OSX has grown a little too serious.

Its not hard to put windows side by side, but nor is it particularly hard to use Control Panel, its just a little more complicated than System Preferences. We are only debating the difference between a few clicks usually when it comes to anything in Windows or OSX. This is why the fanbois adoration of OSX is a mystery to me. OSX is a very nice operating system but at the end of the day both Windows and OSX are still pointing and clicking. They don't require memorising console commands and their relevant switches.

Hardcore gamers will never be happy with anything but a dedicated gaming PC anyway, so what's your point? Jason Beck made some good points here, so I won't reiterate. The bottom line is that top-quality gear costs, whether it's PC or Mac.

In conclusion, different strokes for different folks. My stroke just happens to be And I used Windows all the way from 95 to XP. Still have my XP box, and it runs pretty nicely even though it's approaching 5 years old now.

Of course we won't be happy with anything unless we build it ourselves which Apple don't allow us to do. Apple don't provide anything at all for this need so the fanbois should stop crying about PCs and Windows because they meet the needs of more users than Apple can.

However both your posts were well above the usual fanboi drivel on these forums I doff my cap to you.

[Luis Ortega]

Originally Posted by Jason Beck

Apple is catering to you. Good products just cost a lot of money sometimes.
IMHO the reason why Macs are dominant in our school system is because of the very reasons I gave. They work, the kids will have a harder time f*cking them up, and the school software and other software works better.
Just my h.o.. I've used windows for a decade, so I am entitled to it.

I must disagree.
I work in schools and the main reason that macs are popular is that apple gives them a very low price. Unfortunately, the low cost comes at a price because the machine specs they offer for those prices are less current than their retail models.
And the mac labs we have do not work any better or break any less than the windows labs we have.

[mac2x]

Originally Posted by jimmyjoemccrow

[...]
Of course we won't be happy with anything unless we build it ourselves which Apple don't allow us to do. Apple don't provide anything at all for this need so the fanbois should stop crying about PCs and Windows because they meet the needs of more users than Apple can.

However both your posts were well above the usual fanboi drivel on these forums I doff my cap to you.

Apple isn't about "building it yourself". If you want to do that, hardware is freely available for anyone to buy from many vendors. What's so hard to understand here? Apple is all about providing systems that are basically one package, with a few upgrades that cover most people's needs. If Apple doesn't have what you need, NO ONE is putting a gun to your head and telling you to buy from them.

In the meantime, If anyone here is a "fanboi" [sic], it's you. I'm more of a Unix fanboi than an Apple fanboi.

[Goona]

Snow Leopard > Windows 7

[SXR]

Originally Posted by Goona

Snow Leopard > Windows 7

You definately got my vote.

[muxbox]

Software such as mail, iPhoto, iMovie on Snow Leopard > Windows 7

Windows 7 > Snow Leopard on Speed and Stability and also the way you organise your open windows.

[mac2x]

Originally Posted by muxbox

Software such as mail, iPhoto, iMovie on Snow Leopard > Windows 7

Windows 7 > Snow Leopard on Speed and Stability and also the way you organise your open windows.

Agreed on point one.

As to point two, I'd say "Leopard > Windows of any kind for stability". I have zero intention of upgrading my MBP to SL. Leopard works so perfectly at the 10.5.8 build I don't want to damage a good thing.

[safhsdas]

Windows 7 uses the same core foundation as Vista while fixing issues and prettying up the outside, while Snow Leopard keeps most of the same spots while re-arranging how things work internally. But the mission is the same—to evolve their current OS—not change the whole game. And launching this fall, we can't avoid a comparison study. The stars of Redmond and Cupertino have never been so closely aligned before.

[muxbox]

Give me a mixture of the two please. None of the operating systems are good enough on their own.

[Jason Beck]

Originally Posted by SXR

You definately got my vote.

I agree.

[crazyxzer0]

Originally Posted by muxbox

Give me a mixture of the two please. None of the operating systems are good enough on their own.

agreed. I believe both have pros n cons to the way i work. why limit yourself to one specific tool?

[felt.]

I actually get less spinning beachballs in windows 7..so its obviously better, because I can get work done instead of waiting

[MythicFrost]

Snow Leopard:

Features) Expose, Spaces, Time Machine, Quick Look, Stacks, Dashboard, Spotlight, System Preferences, Software Updates, Finder
Although they aren't exactly "features" I consider Software Update, System Preferences and Finder to be excellent applications and far better than their Windows 7 equivalents.

The SL interface is very clean and tidy (inc. the SL apps, and I'm sure most or some third party apps go along with this)
it's a sight for sore eyes, Windows 7 looks very nice, it does have some eye candy, but the Start Menu and particularly Windows Explorer are messy (I really hate Explorer), and a lot of the applications are messy.

Little Features) SL has lots of little things it can do, like zooming in on the screen, adding dates to iCal from mail with a click, inactive scrolling etc.. they are very little, and are only a few examples but it's easier than doing it the alternative way.
Not to mention the other applications that all come bundled on your computer, plus you've got iLife and iWork which are very nice.

SL works really well together, Windows 7 doesn't. I won't say SL is perfect because it's not, but its better.

Windows 7:

Features) Flip 3D, Shake, Windows Aero Graphics Theme, Peek, Thumbnail Previews, Jump Lists, DirectX
Windows is very good for gaming, that's what I use it for.

Flip3D is cool, I wouldn't want to use it with a lot of documents open though.
Shake is not so good, I can't always get it to work exactly when/as I want, but maybe it's my mouse.

Windows Aero is cool, Peek & Thumbnail Previews look very nice, I don't really use Jump Lists but I imagine they are useful.

End)

The full edition of Windows 7 Ultimate costs $450 and the full edition of SL (Mac Box Set) costs only $220 but includes iLife & iWork 09.
The upgrade edition of Windows 7 Ultimate costs $320 and the upgrade edition of SL costs $39.

You can upgrade up to 5 Macs for $69 or buy the Mac Box Set for up to 5 Macs for $320 (includes license to install iLife/iWork 09 on up to 5 Macs as well).
I don't think Windows does anything like that, I think there is a Student version of Windows 7 but I don't know the AU prices (I'd guess $39 ).
(Prices are in AU dollars and are rough and therefore may be a little off)

Just thought I'd add one line for the sake of not adding imo on nearly every line , this post is purely my opinion lol.

Oh and for all those guys that complain SL is slower and apps crash more than Windows 7, it is not a fair comparison between an upgraded SL and a fresh install of Windows 7.
I'd like to see how you go upgrading a 1-2 year old Vista to Windows 7

The Core i7 iMac is very comparable to a PC in pricing.

Pece

[mac2x]

Originally Posted by felt.

I actually get less spinning beachballs in windows 7..so its obviously better, because I can get work done instead of waiting

True...since there isn't a spinning beachball animation in Windows.

[cjmillsnun]

Originally Posted by mac2x

Agreed on point one.

As to point two, I'd say "Leopard > Windows of any kind for stability". I have zero intention of upgrading my MBP to SL. Leopard works so perfectly at the 10.5.8 build I don't want to damage a good thing.

Disagree,

Windows 7 is extremely stable in my experience. As is Snow.

Leopard < Snow to me in pretty much every aspect including stability

Snow > Windows 7 for UI but surpisingly Snow = 7 for stability. 7 really isn't bad. I'm no Windows fanboi, but this time I feel Microsoft have achieved the impossible. Kudos to them. 7 is actually good!

[mac2x]

Originally Posted by cjmillsnun

[...]

Leopard < Snow to me in pretty much every aspect including stability

[...]

No contest to the other stuff you say...haven't used Win7 all that much.

Curious as to why you say that, though. Obviously, more 64-bit is better, but Leopard is pretty solid. I like it just fine.