How will Snow Leopard compare with Windows 7?

[icemanjc]

So you're a private beta tester that works for both Apple and Microsoft?! Don't they consider that a conflict of interest concerning your job? I mean, since there's no legal way for anyone outside of those companies to get their hands on beta versions of those operating systems and all, you know, you see... and umm...

Last time I checked, it wasn't illegal to know people.

 

[Ferdinand]

I think you can download Beta 1 of Windows 7 from Microsoft's website.

 

[Tommo]

You don't have to be a private beta tester and it is not illegal either. Windows 7 is now in public beta and if you have an Apple Development Connection subscription you have access to apple pre-release software including the OS.

 

[Doctor X]

So . . . call off the Divine Assassin?

--J.D.

 

[icemanjc]

If you have an Apple Development Connection subscription you have access to apple pre-release software including the OS.

Thats only if you are paying. I currently have the free one which only releases application betas.
And currently Microsoft's website still says beta coming soon, even though it was supposed to be released today to the public.

 

[fjdouse]

How will Snow Leopard compare with Windows 7?]

Like a golden egg vs. a wet fart... basically

Looking at the screenshots, it looks like the start bar is going for some kind of KDE-ish look and the chunky window borders look to me like Aero isn't running properly. I've been having a good play with Vista, it feels like it's bloated and by what I've heard Windows 7 isn't much better overall, having said that it's only the first beta but I'm not optimistic. In contrast I'm hearing that Snow Leopard is being freed of the PowerPC legacy code and is substantially quicker, which is great news for my shiny new MacBook. I'm looking forward to more 64bit goodness and hopefully a flippin' port of Blender to take advantage of it.

For me as a Mac user, I DO have an interest in how Microsoft's next OS fares, moreover I'm going to be specifically interested in performance as a guest OS in a virtual machine. I recently did something I've not done for a LONG time, I decided to run a Microsoft OS natively - I used boot camp and Vista (long story) decided to eat the partitions, wiping OS X. Never again. I do run some Windows stuff occasionally out of convenience rather than necessity but by God it NEEDS to be caged in a VM for it's own safety. So if anyone does check Windows 7 out, I'd be interested in how well it runs under virtualisation, especially VirtualBox.

In the meantime, if you want Vista's GUI but a bit more oomph under the bonnet, you could always do what I'm doing at the moment and run Windows 2008 (server) and convert it for workstation use. ymmv.

(hope everyone had a peaceful Christmas and happy New Year to all)

 

[Satcomer]

(hope everyone had a peaceful Christmas and happy New Year to all)

Yes I did have a great Christmas (even though I worked on that day)Thank you.

Now as I said before Microsoft is loosing it's grip on server software (government) at businesses I deal with. In a place i rather not talk about you would be surprised on the desktop software they use. They even have a harding guide. Lately my headquarters called me out of the blue and wondered if my SUN OS training can deal with Red Hat. This really took me by surprised and if the government is contemplating Linux (they already started using it!!!) other business are turning over to Red Hat Server or another flavor.

So Microsoft is really loosing it's grip on business and it was no mistake that VMWare came out with Fusion (and it wasn't just Parallels either). WMWare was chomping on the bit to get OS X server virtualized and also they want to get Server 2003 & 2008 virtualized on OS X, just wait.

 

[fjdouse]

I've just been having a play with the Beta myself, I honestly can't say it's much quicker, took as long to install - I think, I didn't time it. I really, really, really do not like the start bar, it looks crap compared to Vista's. It feels marginally quicker under VirtualBox but with no support for the drivers, plus being a time-bombed (I believe) beta it's not really worth investing my time and energy playing with it too much. Not overly impressed and I've just deleted it now rather than later.

After playing with Windows 2008 too, I've come to the conclusion that it's better just to stick with Vista, even though the virtual disk is eating 14GB of my Mac's hard disk to run just 3 apps I use. Terrible waste of space really. XP would be the more efficient choice.

I think Microsoft have just got it wrong with Windows, a lot of space is used for a bloated, slow, feature-less, application-less environment out of the box, critically dependent on heterogeneous 3rd party apps to get any level of usability which paradoxically increases the risk of system non-usability. Essentially a bloated application launcher compared to OS X, workflow is neither graceful or efficient. I see no innovation here just poor imitation and a perennial striving for what they so obviously cannot achieve. People have not responded to Vista, so what's the solution? More of the same. People didn't like all this 'Basic', 'Home Premium', 'Business' and 'Ultimate' nonsense, so again the solution is yet more of the same.

In short, I've always said 'DONT GET A PIG TO DO THE JOB OF A LEOPARD'*
(modify: Panther, Tiger, Snow Leopard etc as appropriate)

How does Windows 7 compare to OS X? Really? It compares just like every other prior version of Windows, and I'll predict any to come - poorly, because Microsoft just lack a certain something that Apple just GETS intuitively. Microsoft for all of their money cannot buy it, they can't acquire it or develop it over time, it was there from the very beginning. It's why Apple are still here all these years on and Microsoft are STILL trying to be like them and STILL missing the mark every single time.

 

[deer dance]

Microsoft for all of their money cannot buy it, they can't acquire it or develop it over time, it was there from the very beginning. It's why Apple are still here all these years on and Microsoft are STILL trying to be like them and STILL missing the mark every single time.

Wow.
That's just...

Beautiful.

The fact is, Windows was created and built out of haste to compete with the original Macintosh. And after 20 some years, Microsoft never went into a board meeting and said, "We need to stop. We need to stop and rethink Windows. We're still using the same basis it was founded on, haste and jealously. If we take two or three years and work on making a simple system. We could do it. We could close the windows and open the doors."