My OsX vs Win Xp comparison

S

Steve Bosell

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I have been using macs since os6 and conceder myself a mac enthuses. I work in an I.S. department with only win nt/2000 and have a pc at home for games. My two home systems are fairly equivalent: g4/533 512mb, geforce2mx 32mb with Mac osX.1 and an athalon 700, 192mb ram and a geforce2mx400 64mb with windows xp pro. I was interested in how these two systems performed compared to one another. The first thing I noticed is the window resizing is BETTER on the mac. OsX appears to be smoother and renders more of the windows contents while it is being resizes. Xp is faster but more seems to take larger steps when being resized. This is only in the finder however, when resizing an internet explorer window, osx sucks. Next I tested Quake3 1.30 with the same settings, OsX 52.7 fps, Xp 59.8, the megahertz myth doesn’t really stand up here I guess. Macs are still second class citizens on the network, macs don’t have the greatest exchange support and the SBM client built into Osx.1 is slow as molasses. I think the mac gui is light years ahead if xp, I do not think the microsoft people put much effort into the developing a good interface, xp has little icons on the right of the task bar and similar ones on the left with completely different behavior. A huge bar along the top of the start menu that doesn’t do anything, and the whole luna thing is just plain ugly. The OsX interface looks great and is more intuitive, with the exception of the folders in the dock that open a finder window as opposed as opening out into a menu, I hate that. I want multiple desktops too like linux. I was more than a little envious however when I plugged my unsupported canon bjc3000 printer into my pc and the driver loaded right up behind the scenes. Osx is a little rough around the edges, but looks cool as hell. I just wish it did not take a $3000 mac to match the performance of a $700 Pc.
 
This is slightly off topic - but you can have multiple desktops or workspaces.. its called Space.dock. Its on the latest Mac Addict Disc. About to install it, I'll tell yas how it goes.
 
I just tested it...

yah its cool....

its not true multiple desktops (like i have seen on redhat) but it provides basically the same functionality but you are able to keep some things global (such as the dock) although if you minimize something in one space, and go to another space, it hides it from the dock until you go back to the original space. This would be handy if you're like and me browse 10 websites at once, and you hate it when your dock is cluttered by minimized explorer windows. And could be handy if you don't want your boss to see you browsing web pages at work. : )
 
use mozilla's tab feature.

But I must say that I went back to OmniWeb since 4.1sp5. The browser still rocks although it still doesn't support everything. But I tend to like reading in it far better than in other browsers.
 
Hey Steve, I just wanted to let you know that the extra 32 meg on the PC GeForce makes a big difference in the Quake 3 framerates. OpenGL is a VRAM hog, so thats not a very equal test there. The scores are still closer than I would have expected with that difference though. Not bad at all, but I understand your point on the price comparisons but I can't give up my Mac as my primary system no matter the cost. ;) . Good comparision though.
 
:)
ok ok, macs are a lot more expensive than most pcs are, but they also last longer. i still have 2 six year old performas at home, and they still work! even the disk drive still works, although it is full of dirt :D

at work i've got a 866 mhz pentium box, and this peace of shit already went back to the seller like 3 times because of harddisk failures, motherboard failures etc.
and it is just one year old yet.
i dont think that this pentium box will still work in 6 years like my performas do. :)
 
You can't just say macs last longer, it's purely luck of the drawer. I have an original IBM 8086 at home that still has the original 10Mb MFM hard disk that is the size of a brick, and has no bad sectors, and works perfectly. Not bad for a 20 year old computer.

We have had to send iMacs, G3's & G4's back to the Applecentre sometimes a few months after they are new for various reasons.

Bottom line - Apple cares, Microsoft doesn't.
 
I love Mac oS X 10.1, but i gotta say besides the ugly funny-looking GUI of XP, it rocks. It's been two or three months since i've been using it and I 've never had no stability problems with it.
I 've completly forgotten about the blue screen of death, and the biggest advantage of XP is compatibility. Even if it takes more time to install xp than Mac X, Xp recognize everything and let you know about software/hardware issues and fix them. It's a pain in the ass to upgrade appz with Mac os X, It is not complete because it still needs mac os 9 A/K/A classic most of the time or sometime you even gonna have to spend some extra bucks to get the X version. And don't even talk about hardware issues i'll skip that one. I know most of you people won't agree with me but Mac os X is not completed yet. It has big potential but still relies on mac os 9 most of the time. I love X, i would love it could be my main os but for serious work even playin XP is my reasonable choice, it's hard to say but that's true M$ did a great job.
 
I'd agree with shadowwarroir that osx isn't finished yet. I love it to bits, but it's still not finished. I think Apple are doing a fantastic job though, as ever.
 
According to Apple it's not finished yet, either. No secret there. That's why they have their clock transition analogy for us. The progress is coming along great, however. This wasn't an easy task to do, and isn't a comparison to 2K to XP upgrade, in my opinion. That is nothing major, so the transition should be easy. I personally didn't expect Apple to get as much done as they did with OS X, in the time frame. Great work, and it IS my full time OS with very little classic apps running for me. :D
 
Not that I use my Cube for all that many things (I'm not exactly a power user, and with a 56k modem for internet access and being a college student, I end up with not that much great commercial software) but I have to sayeven though I have classic load at login, I never use it. Maybe for an occasional old game, but that's it. I work in the computer labs @ Penn State Abington, so I do any Microsoft Office stuff there (we PSU students get free M$ software through Penn State's deal w/ the devil, so I'll have Office X soon enough). Anything else I do, at home at least, I can do natively in X. BTW, I can't wait for Applescript Studio!
 
Just a quick thought here:

How long has it taken Microsoft to finally come up with a half-decent system?
Plus, let's not forget that OS X is still in it's 1st version. It's only had one *major* upgrade from its original release. For a system whose ENTIRE architecture has been changed, I'd say Apple kicks some butt. Granted, they're not done. But when they are, I HIGHLY doubt windows will even compare.
 
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