Snow leopard and Windows 7, Who is the Winner?

 As someone who uses both platforms for work and personal entertainment, I've been wanting to do a performance comparison between Windows 7 and Mac OS X since I first got my hands on the Windows 7 RTM.

Now vista has finally become a "past tense", upgraded windows 7 grand opening. The competition between Microsoft and Apple is heating up. The Windows 7 version from the test started, praised by professionals, whether Microsoft can therefore pulled one back?

In fact,before Microsoft official launched Windows 7, Apple is preparing its upgraded version of Snow Leopard.

From the vista, Microsoft has consciously imitated Apple's system, so vista did a very beautiful and fashion interface, just as Apple did. Windows 7, take up the fine tradition of this kind, and improve the performance details. Windows 7 desktop task bar performs almost in the same way as Apple Snow Leopard Dock does: the most commonly used icons are locked on the taskbar. Right click on the icon, the icon will automatically be enlarged. It also enables us to do some simple settings.

While, Snow Leopard is just a small upgrade. In fact, Apple has admitted that Snow Leopard is mainly fix bugs in order to achieve performance improvements.
Snow Leopard only takes up 5G of disk space, while windows 7 needs up to 7G. The good is, compare with the previous generation, they both had weight-loss, greatly reduce the space occupied on the hard disk.

However,Snow Leopard can’t be installed on other system model or old mac os x. Revealed at Apple's official website, the computer must be equipped with Intel processor computer, 1GB RAM, 5GB free disk space and DVD drive in order to install Snow leopard.

In comparison, Windows 7 is more affordable. It has lowered the computer hardware requirements than previous generation vista, which allows even notebook notebook can install and run Windows 7 without significant delays and hysteresis.

The price

PC/Mac purchase date        Windows 7 upgrade cost           Snow Leopard upgrade cost
October 2001 - Jan 2006                    $50 - $120                             Not supported
Jan 2006 - Sep 2007                           $50 - $120                             $158-169 (Intel only)
Oct 2007 – Jun 2009                           $50 - $120                             $29
Jun 2009 or later                                     $0                                        $0


In contrast, Windows 7 is even more cost-effective upgrade.

When booting the system, I do not feel much different. Windows 7 needs 45 seconds. Snow Leopard takes 37.6 seconds. However, wehn shutting down, Snow leopard does a much better job that only takes 9.3 seconds while Windows 7 needs13.2 seconds.

On wifi, the Snow Leopard runs a little fast than Windows 7 that will require the user to wait some time.