Mac vs PC Lab Test from Popular Mechanics

April 18, 2008 by Ross McKillop

This Popular Mechanics review has been out for a few days now and has received a fair bit of attention! Are Mac users surprised… Not really, I think it’s the PC users who are finding the verdict surprising. What I like the most is the fact that Popular Mechanic is both credible and neutral as a tester in this debate. Many Mac vs PC test results could be said to be biased one way or the other where as the Popular Mechanic results are hard to dispute.

And so who is the winner? Why the Mac of course.

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.

Popular Mechanics also said Vista was sluggish and that PC’s where not the bargain that many computer buyers believe they are getting.

Read the entire Popular Mechanics article here