Mac vs. PC
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 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.
Detailed Benchmark Scores: Desktops
| Benchmark Test | iMac 20-in screen; 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 1GB DDR2 | Gateway One 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo; 3GB DDR2 |
| Geekbench |
| Overall | 3180 (2651) | 1903 |
| Integer | 2766 (3398) | 2324 |
| Floating Point | 4460 (2675) | 1713 |
| Memory | 2299 (1720) | 1597 |
| Stream | 1916 (1819) | 1707 |
| Cinebench |
| 1 CPU | 2619 (2429) | 1979 |
| 2 CPUs | 4840 (4641) | 3739 |
| Graphics | 4819 (3834) | 2913 |
*Scores in parentheses are for Macs running Vista in Boot Camp.
Detailed Benchmark Scores: Laptops
| Benchmark Test | MacBook 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 1GB DDR2 (Out of production) | MacBook 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (Penryn); 3GB DDR2 | Asus M51 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo; 2GB DDR2 |
| Geekbench |
| Overall | 2885 (2465) | 3156 (2657) | 2445 |
| Integer | 2536 (3099) | 2734 (3421) | 3102 |
| Floating Point | 3959 (2429) | 4395 (2660) | 2444 |
| Memory | 2156 (1730) | 2378 (1785) | 1636 |
| Stream | 1809 (1850) | 1853 (1717) | 1772 |
| Cinebench |
| 1 CPU | 2409 | 2741 (2561) | 2214 |
| 2 CPUs | 4468 | 5216 (4838) | 4198 |
| Graphics | 2027 | 2040 (835) | 2495 |
*Scores in parentheses are for Macs running Vista in Boot Camp.
Reference:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4258725.html?page=1
