Apple’s Snow Leopard is cool, but friendlier Windows 7 cleans up

The greatest computer operating sys-tem battle is not between Linux and everything else, but rather between Windows and Apple.

A lot of people find the Linux desktop significantly weak — and to some extent I agree — so they choose to remain with the mainstream Windows or Mac OS.

The Mac OS is, in fact, a not-so-distant relative of Linux.

Sitting upon Unix, it has emerged as one of the greatest operating systems ever built.

But then again, so has Windows and so has Linux.

So how do you know whether you are right to go for the new Windows 7 or Snow Leopard?

Snow Leopard is one DVD, one update, one size fits all.

Apple has the knack for covering everyone in one platform.

At a paltry $29 to upgrade, it is impressive.

Snow Leopard is more engine upgrade than cosmetics.

The PowerPC code is gone. This is the first fully 64-bit release from Apple.

Not a half-baked and bloated upgrade to handle PowerPC and Intel Macs but the real deal embrace of Intel’s 64-bit processors.

In the cosmetics department, the interface has been tweaked, slightly, and you probably would not notice this.

Waste of engineering finesse

Which is where Windows gets it wrong.

There are six flavours to pick from — six! — the only blessing, there are 32-bit and 64-bit releases.

Here is my general rule of thumb: Buy Windows 7 Home Premium and above.

Prices are at $199-plus; so it’s an expensive buy/upgrade and you are better off buying the biggest one.

If you asked me, all you need is Ultimate or Enterprise.

Anything else is a waste of time.

In this respect, Microsoft sadly chooses to mute options, wasting its engineering finesse.

By having some features in some and not in others, Windows loses its authenticity.

So you have got yourself Snow Leopard and Windows 7.

Time for the upgrades, and this is where Windows rules.

If you are coming from an XP/Vista environment, you just pop in the DVD and upgrade.

With its new improved interface, everything is easy — including fewer mouse clicks.

Snow Leopard means that you must have Leopard pre-installed; Tiger and earlier cats will not work as easily.

Windows 7 is ahead with the hardware as it will work with older machines — as far back as Pentium 4s that run XP; eight-year-old machines. Snow Leopard will only run on the new Intel-based Macs.

Both 7 and Snow Leopard have shed a lot of weight and perform even better.

Bootups and shutdows are much faster.

Windows 7 on almost similar hardware seems to boot up faster than Snow Leopard.

An antivirus programme will, however, easily change that.

This is where Apple beats Microsoft: security: it is fatal to ever have a Windows computer on the Internet without antivirus.

Which, in turn, slows down the machine’s performance.

So which upgrade is better?

A very difficult question, because the two have to be reviewed in line with their predecessors and that would mean Windows 7 is a huge blessing based on Vista’s disaster.

Mac have kept consistency with the same interface but ever so subtly improved.

Sadly, they bring nothing new to the table, just improvement.

But 7 is totally different: much better than Vista, truly a breath of fresh air.

Its performance is comparable to XP, even on more recent hardware.

It introduces a greatly improved interface.

Cleaner, and less cluttered than Vista, faster and sleeker.

Other smaller things, like upgrading drivers, do not require a reboot — something Windows has fallen down on in their past releases.

The File Manager is superbly done, beats Vista’s hands down, but the control panel is overly crowded.

Overall, albeit being overpriced, Windows 7 is better than Snow Leopard, which lacks the jazz is should have had and will age more quickly.

Snow Leopard just doesn’t compare to 7.

Windows 7 supports more machines, previous releases are still eligible for an upgrade, including the hardware, and a lot more people will benefit from upgrading.

Microsoft might have just got it right this time.