I bought the slowest new mac you can get these days - a Core2Duo 1.83ghz mac mini... but with 2gb ram and the 80gb drive.

I also have a quad core Q9450 2.8ghz vista 64bit 8gb ram raid 0 OS drive. My vista system is quick without being overclocked and tidy too; defragged, services to a minimum. my raid 0 is benchmarked at average 150mb read/s

Ignoring intense applications like photoshop, video editing, FPS games, just working within windows on normal stuff; internet, development, loads of windows open, etc...

the mac is just as quick

i am also wondering, having developed with a registry for the last 10+years, why the hell there is a registry in windows

ps, i'm one of the few people who like vista too.

next machines will all be osx, no doubt.

 

So you are saying that when you don't run anything on them they are just as quick as each other?

I've got 4 Vista installs at home. Two on laptops and two on desktops. If I don't try and run anything (i.e. just web browsing or using Word etc), my lowly celeron powered XPS laptop runs just as fast as my Quad core Q9550 desktop machine.

Not sure what point you are making really...

 

tee hee, nice try Iain

obviously there's a disparity when running photoshop CS3 or any cpu intensive application.

I mean normal windows work - I haven't done anything on my PC today at work that has been cpu intensive, but I have 20 windows/applications open whilst i do my work - and it's precisely this scenario that show where osx has an apparent performance over vista.

 

I can't compare the OSs by CPU intensive operations as I don't have comparable hardware

 

What do you class as normal windows work? Web browsing, email? System performance can depend greatly on the software you are running (and how much resources they are absorbing). You can't really compare OSX vs Windows on this score unless you exactly the same apps on both, (and then you are really comparing the apps, not the os).

Also, what graphics card do you have installed? I frequently have that many windows open (in fact I have now, on a dual screen setup with three remote desktops running) and have never noticed any slowdown...

 

no idea what graphics card is in the mac, but in my windows pc a 9800gt

There's no benchmarking here, just going on apparent OS responsiveness bringing up windows, accessing drives, usb peripherals, application start ups.

You and I, Iain, have been developing on numerous windows systems since VC1 and VB3 I'll bet and we can tell when an os is responsive in use.

I just thought that for an OS to be as responsive on a dramatically slower machine is a great attribute.

 

Not the fastest of cards then, (I'm running an 8800gtx, overclocked which I think is quicker).

Don't remind me. Mind you, I'm still using 3270 terminals

Yep, certainly is

Last time I used a Mac I must admit I was unimpressed, but that was a couple of years ago now (before the move to Intel), so I expect things have moved on since then...

 

If I could dual boot my main machine into OSX and vista, I am sure this conversation would be a little different and I would have some facts to corroborate which os was really quicker.

are you still on MVS machines? Okay it's been a long time since I was a CICS sysprog :|

 

I work for a company that makes COBOL compilers (amongst other things) so it's all part of the job

 

No way!

I was on ES9000s developing COBOL/CICS transaction messaging systems before MQ came along.

No wonder you have so many games machines

 

Been working there 14+ years now. All that MQ nonsence will be gone soon though (once everyone has moved to the cloud ).

p.s. you can never have too many games machines