macnn
04/17/2008, 3:35pm, EDT
Thursday, April 17th
Macs better than PCs at Vista
Popular Mechanics says that Macs run Windows Vista better than PCs designed to run the operating system. The magazine published an analysis based on user feedback and performance benchmarks for similarly equipped machines, using a number of 'real world' tests to evaluate the machines. Testers were asked to set up the computers right out of the box and "explore the machines through everyday tasks such as Web surfing, document creation, uploading photos, downloading Adobe Acrobat files and playing music and movies through Media Center and Front Row." The magazine said that in both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple's computers were the winners. Results found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than the PCs did.
"Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. Our PCs installed some software faster, but in general they were slower in our time trials. Plus, both PCs showed weaker performance on third-party benchmarks than the Macs. Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac," said the report.
[via The Inquirer]
Filed under: Apple, computers
Other story tags: Windows, Vista, performance, benchmark, Media Center, Front Row
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This isn't news to most mac users, but it's good to see a widely-read non-biased publication putting some real numbers out there.
Eventually Vista runs snappy, and XP...well it can really run efficiently.
But...you have to do that, for most users, their machines, no matter how fast, are strangled to near unusability by the pre-installs.
My Dell Vostro supposedly had fewer than normal pre-installs, but wow did it run bad.
It slowed to an usable halt on my favorite language learning website, allowing me to type about 1 letter per second (completely unusable)...I upgraded Flash, that didn't work, and the only way to get the dell branded internet explorer to re-install was by upgrading to IE8.
I know for a fact I don't need IE8 for this website:)) but the upgrade at least allowed me to blow away the dell config easily.
After taking a day to de-crappify the Vostro, it runs fine.