Interesting, but my experience is the complete opposite. I make my living as sysadmin for a mostly Windows-based charity, although we also have a handful of Macs. I also have both Vista and Mac boxen on my desk (XP too, for that matter). Leopard hasn't put a foot wrong since day one. The Vista box works, but has been an irritating source of almost daily glitches..... go figure....
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Mac Leopard or Windows Vista
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Interesting, but my experience is the complete opposite. I make my living as sysadmin for a mostly Windows-based charity, although we also have a handful of Macs. I also have both Vista and Mac boxen on my desk (XP too, for that matter). Leopard hasn't put a foot wrong since day one. The Vista box works, but has been an irritating source of almost daily glitches..... go figure....
Yes. I think most hate it simply because it's Windows.
Vista is quite impressive. I still prefer OS X. But, Vista really is an impressive OS.
I actually don't find that the security window pops up much in normal use. So, I left it on.
I only see it when I'm tinkering with settings, or installing a program.
Otherwise, I haven't had it lock-up, quit, or throw a bug at me at all. Rock solid.
OS X, well, it's been mostly reliable. I rarely have an issue, and those I've had have been easily fixed.
The end quality of the Windows encoding was actually very good. I'd say comparable or better than iDVD. It looked as good as a purchased film.
I'd have a hard time telling the Windows or iDVD finished quality apart.
I do prefer the iDVD assembly method / interface. But, the end result of both products is pretty comparable. Just that Windows gets there first.
I still use iDVD just because I like the way it works. But, if I were in a hurry, I'd probably go with Windows.
Vista looks promising; however, it's just not ready for prime time just yet.
I have it installed on a Sony Vaio and coming out of sleep, it will either crash or take forever reassociating with an access point. Turns out that lots of other people are having the same issues I am. Not to mention it runs pretty damn slow, even with Aero turned off.
In all honesty, it's a public beta that people paid for. Hopefully the first Service Pack will fix most of the issues.
In comparison to Leopard, well ... I just started using it yesterday so I can't comment.
Honestly though, I don't see the point of a Vista/Leopard "battle" that many news outlets are trying to hype. In reality, it's either XP vs Vista, Tiger vs Leopard, or Apple vs other PCs.
I have it installed on a Sony Vaio and coming out of sleep, it will either crash or take forever reassociating with an access point. Turns out that lots of other people are having the same issues I am. Not to mention it runs pretty damn slow, even with Aero turned off.
In all honesty, it's a public beta that people paid for. Hopefully the first Service Pack will fix most of the issues.
In comparison to Leopard, well ... I just started using it yesterday so I can't comment.
Honestly though, I don't see the point of a Vista/Leopard "battle" that many news outlets are trying to hype. In reality, it's either XP vs Vista, Tiger vs Leopard, or Apple vs other PCs.
troll (ish)
You say Windows is "... by far more responsive" and has an "... instant response..." but then claim right below that, that it's some marginal mili-second timing thing. This tells me that the intent of your post was more emotional than factual and that you are probably exaggerating just to make a point.
The claim that Leopard is in fact faster than Vista is more than supported by the facts.
You seem like a reasonable person, but this comment goes against the experience of almost every other person with a similar setup that has ever posted about it. it seems like a bit of a troll.
You say Windows is "... by far more responsive" and has an "... instant response..." but then claim right below that, that it's some marginal mili-second timing thing. This tells me that the intent of your post was more emotional than factual and that you are probably exaggerating just to make a point.
The claim that Leopard is in fact faster than Vista is more than supported by the facts.
You read too much into that.
When I click on something and get an instant reaction, it is far more responsive.
When, I click on something in OS X, and get a response in a reasonable time-frame, it's still responsive but feels much slower.
The thing is, that everything in Windows Vista on my Mac Pro feels "instant".
Everything in OS X feels responsive, but not instant.
Essentially, it's like it is reasonable performance, but not what I would call fast.
It responds quickly. But, it definitely doesn't feel "snappy".
The speed at which Windows responds to my actions almost feels like it was anticipating what I would be doing.
In OS X, it feels more like it waited to see, and then reacted.
Naturally, neither OS knows what I want until I tell it. But, with Windows Vista, it almost feels like it already knew and was just waiting for me to tell it.
No emotional connection there at all. Just stating how different it feels when I switch back and forth.
I don't gripe about the responsiveness of OS X. I use it constantly, and I like it.
But, when I switch to Windows Vista to perform a task, it usually feels like I just stepped up to a faster computer.
With Windows Vista, I see less compelling reason to choose one OS over the other. Vista is very nice. If I didn't simply prefer OS X's method, I would see little reason to choose OS X over Vista.
With Vista, my only gripes would be related to Activation, license terms, and the way that every program has a piece of it running in the background even when not in use.
Aside from that, I find Vista to be very nice, very quick, and as stable as OS X.
I've had more issues with Leopard than I have with Vista. But, the issues I've had with Leopard have all been minor and fixed after some time in the terminal.
So, I wouldn't say anything bad about Leopard either. It had minor issues that were fixed quickly. I just hadn't had any issues with Vista.
Aside from the minor interface changes, Leopard feels just like Tiger. No faster, no slower. Just about the same.
I initially bought a Macbook Pro for the hardware design/benefits rather than OS X. After having it for about 3 months now, I've only booted into Windows a handful of times and usually just because I'm bored. So far I've found OS X (running Leopard now) to be very stable and pretty intuitive. I like the whole dock idea much better than having a taskbar, and the menubar on top makes much more sense than having the system tray on the bottom.
Stability has been the biggest benefit for me in OS X. I can't recall ever getting 30+ day up times with no restarts in Windows. I don't know why but it seems like Windows decays when it's been on for a while and after a restart it's snappy and running smooth again. Again, that's just been my experience with both XP and Vista.
The whole argument of Vista vs OS X is kind of silly though. Windows in general trumps OS X in terms of market share. For every OS X user, there's easily 20+ Windows users. It's also not hardware specific which is a huge benefit for Apple since they are only designing their OS for a handful of different platforms versus millions (the combinations you can have with a custom built computer is endless).
Really what it comes down to is what you need a computer to do, and using whatever it takes to meet those needs. Most college students buy Macs for the aesthetic reasons (like I did) or just to be different. Either way, both OS's are very capable and I hope the market share for OS X and Linux (can't forget them, most innovation comes from here) continues to increase though. Competition is always good.
Stability has been the biggest benefit for me in OS X. I can't recall ever getting 30+ day up times with no restarts in Windows. I don't know why but it seems like Windows decays when it's been on for a while and after a restart it's snappy and running smooth again. Again, that's just been my experience with both XP and Vista.
The whole argument of Vista vs OS X is kind of silly though. Windows in general trumps OS X in terms of market share. For every OS X user, there's easily 20+ Windows users. It's also not hardware specific which is a huge benefit for Apple since they are only designing their OS for a handful of different platforms versus millions (the combinations you can have with a custom built computer is endless).
Really what it comes down to is what you need a computer to do, and using whatever it takes to meet those needs. Most college students buy Macs for the aesthetic reasons (like I did) or just to be different. Either way, both OS's are very capable and I hope the market share for OS X and Linux (can't forget them, most innovation comes from here) continues to increase though. Competition is always good.
I just got my SR Macbook yesterday and I've been using Vista on my new desktop for the past 1.5 months. Although I don't have very much experience using OS X, I can see it being a bit more user-friendly and a better environment for productivity. Vista's aero glass looks nice and the 64-bit version is more responsive than Leopard, which might partly be because the hardware on my desktop is better than my Macbook (Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz, 4GB DDR2-800, 7200RPM drive, Nvidia 8800 vs 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo, 1GB DDR2-667, 5400RPM drive, GMA X3100). My experience with Vista seems to be better than most users as I haven't had many issues with compatibility or stability. The security also seems rather good. The best thing about Leopard are the features such as spaces and quick view and Vista's window+tab cascading seems pretty useless. They are both similar OS's as many features seem to be mirrored but I predict the more I use OS X the more I'll come to appreciate it.