Apple compared to pc

[Jigglelicious]

You guys are right, Windows can get easily bloated down with extra software which brings it to a crawl. The Dell at work (its only one year old now) is a 2.2GHz P4 - more than enough for the simple web browsing we do. Yet just getting the Start menu to respond can take a good 4-5 seconds sometimes. I don't know what kind of crap Dell installs on their systems, but my friends old Athlon 800 is far snappier than the Dell. I'm sure with a clean format and reinstall of windows, it can be made snappy again.

However, my mac has *never* been snappy. Its performance can best be described as "adequate"; not painfully slow, yet not fast by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps when working in Photoshop or some other app, it does have the ability to perform work quickly. However, in just simple window management, OSX still feels like a slouch. I can't even imagine what OSX 10.0 was like!

 

[gopher]

I don't know what slow scroll speeds you are talking about. I have a factory default 512 MB of RAM September 2003 17" Powerbook. Nothing slow on that machine. There are issues which can cause Mac OS X to slow down. I suggest reading:

http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html

To learn about those issues and how to deal with them.

 

[question fear]

xp can definitely be slowed down with spyware...i spent two hours fixing my friends computers last night and wiping out their spyware, getting them set up with netscape (which in my mind was marginally better than the ie they were using before)....but once i got the spyware cleaned and ie out of the picture it made all the difference in the world vis a vis speed....
but thats my only real xperience. (pun intended).
-carly

 

[kelvinz]

These are the 2 machines I currently own.

12" rev C 1.33ghz g4 powerbook, stock

1900xp+ AMD, 512meg ram, 9700pro,

what I've noticed is that XP is much snappier than OS X, not only that but the mouse scrolls so much smoother in XP.

There is no doubt in my mind that the G4 is an outdated chip as its been on the market for 4 years now, and the day that pc laptops look as sexy physically as a apple laptop and carry a 4 hour battery life is the day I go back to PC's.

 

[themadchemist]

This answer cannot be answered meaningfully with a simple number.
As a recent Mac switcher, I find that as far as the "snapiness" of the system goes, a 1.5ghz would be along the lines of a 500MHz Pentium 2. The actual performance of applications is more up there with a 1.5-2GHz P4. Don't get me wrong, I'm VERY glad I switched to Mac, but WinXP system and application interfaces are F-A-S-T, and that's the one thing I miss most.

Lee Tom

Hmm, I have had the opposite experience. With Panther, not with OS X.1, I have noticed that the system interface is extremely snappy. Windows XP, on the other hand, CAN be snappy, but you have to be really delicate.

I am sometimes impatient and will click a couple more times than I should. Whereas this tends to stall Windows for several seconds, Mac OS seems pretty responsive and can handle my impatience.

 

[jxyama]

Hmm, I have had the opposite experience. With Panther, not with OS X.1, I have noticed that the system interface is extremely snappy. Windows XP, on the other hand, CAN be snappy, but you have to be really delicate.

I am sometimes impatient and will click a couple more times than I should. Whereas this tends to stall Windows for several seconds, Mac OS seems pretty responsive and can handle my impatience.

is it just me or often times in XP, i can click the start key -> programs and it takes a long time for all the apps to show up in the menu?

i've seen the swinging flashlight on the configuration windows on XP many times too. takes ages for the system related config. icons to show up.

 

[themadchemist]

is it just me or often times in XP, i can click the start key -> programs and it takes a long time for all the apps to show up in the menu?

i've seen the swinging flashlight on the configuration windows on XP many times too. takes ages for the system related config. icons to show up.

Yeah, I've noticed that abnormality with the start menu before. I've also noticed files taking an excrutiatingly long time to open and the same for windows. I've seen icons have some trouble, as well.

Also, have you noticed that the search feature in Windows takes incredibly long? Maybe it's psychosematic as a result of it showing you every stupid folder that it's search through instead of just doing its job.

I dunno.

 

[WindowzLoather]

You are absolutely right - scroll speeds mean nothing in terms of performance. But my point is, why can't OSX do something as simple as scrolling a webpage in a "snappy" fashion? It shouldn't take a Dual G5 to accomplish this. And this is with no apps running. If i suddenly start burning/ripping a CD, window scrolling becomes so choppy its disorienting. No PC that i've ever worked on had problems like this - be it in Windows, BeOS, Linux, or even AmigaOS.

On my P4 1.5, it puts scrolling above anything running in the back ground, and its not a ram problem either, I have 512 and it usually doesn't use but about a tenth of it! I can't even listen to a mp3 on iTunes (Win) without it cutting up the sound! I rather see slow scrolling on my iMac 17" becouse it puts more important programs and applications over "Smooth Scrolling!"