Bad news for Microsoft, good news for Apple and Intel

[l Krafty l]

Bad news for Microsoft, good news for Apple and Intel

The May issue of Popular Mechanics includes a comparative review, with extensive benchmarks, of Macs and PCs.

Posted by Dan Farber

April 16, 2008 1:44 PM PDT

Quote:

The verdict turned out to be somewhat in line with Apple\'s exaggerated commercials--the PC is slower (running Vista, compared to Apple\'s Leopard operating system) and less easy to use, and it doesn\'t have a clear cost advantage. Both are running Intel, so that\'s always good news for the chipmaker. (Credit: Apple) Following is the Popular Mechanics verdict: Mac: In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple\'s computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn\'t come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine. Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X. In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown, and program launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple\'s platform-switching Boot Camp software--and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did. PC: 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. That means that for the price of the Gateway, you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway\'s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot--and still save $100.

Bad news for Microsoft, good news for Apple and Intel | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

[T Sizzles]

Fixed the heading for ya.

But why would you hemorrhage out an extra $1000 when you can spend $60 and get more RAM or upgrade the processor on purchase?

[Haxalot88]

Chances are they took a mac-book with high specs and compared it to a PC running low specs...
but remember kids, vista sux. Go with XP.

[digitalhigh]

Yeah, no doubt. How would leopard do in a bench test against a customized version of XP? And WTF kind of hardware did they use in that test to get a PC that was that expensive? Something doesn't smell right...

[Crackmatt]

Quote: Originally Posted by haxalot88

Chances are they took a mac-book with high specs and compared it to a PC running low specs...
but remember kids, vista sux. Go with XP.

eh, I like Vista, but I have a great computer and it runs flawlessly.

and I agree with you all about the pc having sucky specs on it most likely.

[Jay]

Oh this is complete bull****!

a) what benchmarking software were they using?
b) what were the conditions and stress tests that they were performing?
c) why couldn't they actually explain there benchmarking process like every other good reviewer?!
d) What type of crackpot score system is that (look at the last page)
e) That's not even a real desktop, it's one of those stupid "shove everything in a monitor and try and call it a tablet" things.

[Siman]

yeah but still what i think they where doing was running to computer with the closes spec to each other.
You cant say sup a window's computer up and run it against a stock mac whats the advantage to that they just want the whole thing for consumer who will just buy the computers and use them with out doing any
hardware mods.

[CodeytheRhino]

I'm a complete PCfag, but I agree that Vista=AIDS and is slower than hell. I'm not even kidding when I say I almost bought a Mac because of how slow Vista is. My PC with a crap Athalon single core and 1 gb of RAM beats the pants of my Core 2 Duo and 3 gb of RAM on my laptop. Doesn't make sense to me.

Also, they should've comprared PCs with AMD to the Intel Macs just for kicks.

[AzzidReign]

Quote: Originally Posted by digitalhigh

Yeah, no doubt. How would leopard do in a bench test against a customized version of XP? And WTF kind of hardware did they use in that test to get a PC that was that expensive? Something doesn't smell right...

lmao, most of us here have custom build computers so that's different..I'm sure they used some crappy Dell computer that most schools use lol