is the macbooks faster than pcs?

if we had the same specs, windows-laptop vs mac-laptop.

which could perform tasks faster?

i do alot of multi-tasking. watching a movie while downloading another, and i might even burn a dvd at the same time.

using windows xp on my 1.7ghz pentium-m inspiron (512mb, 60gb HD) is really annoying to do all these things.

actually downloading a movie + watching another is enough to make my laptop freeze to death.




one last thing, is the mac OSX compatible with all video formats?

 

Not too familiar with macs. I would like to know too as I plan on getting one.

I do know that Linux runs faster than windows. I would put my money on almost any non windows OS running faster.

I also know that Movie crews all use macbooks, Audio producers prefer it to. It's suppose to be the best at Video & Audio, so I doubt it crashes much.

 

you can't compare because the OSs and apps are different.

if you load windows onto the mac, a similarly spec'd PC will be faster, but that's not a fair comparison.

 

my faster PC loads XP Pro slower then my Macbook if that helps^^

 

That is not true. Using Boot Camp, Windows on a Mac will be just as fast on a PC. As for which OS is faster, it actually depends more on the application than the OS. You asked about multi-tasking, both Windows and OS X should multi-task very well, especially with the dual core processors. I really do not think there is an overall speed advantage one way or the other, just certain things may be faster here and slower there.

 

The current generation of Intel Macs will not run most mac applications (for example Adobe Photoshop for the mac) faster than their Windows counter parts, as the software is still designed to run on the powerPC architecture.
However, with sufficient RAM, Mac applications do usually run faster (for example, running Photoshop or MS Office for Mac on a dual G5 with 2GB RAM is absolutely amazing). Expect Macs to excel in speed even more when mac software designed for the intel architectures come out.
Do note that I am comparing software designed for the mac with software designed for Windows, and there is significantly more software available for Windows than for Mac.
Furthermore, Mac OS X is a very well designed Operating System. Windows XP and Vista are still based on the ancient 1993 Windows NT, making them far less efficient than the much newer OS X.
Also, Windows machines require a BIOS, which also dates back a few decades. Macs use a different booting system (forgot the name for it) which is far more efficient than the BIOS.

 

iwork's "pages" loads document slower than microsft word. i don't know if its pages thing or mac os x thing. mac start up really fast since it doesn't have antivirus/firewall software (not to mention registry, Dll, etc.) dragging it down. it also use EFI instead of BIOS.
quicktime support more format than windows media player. the mac version of VLC ( http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) is heaps better than the one in windows (prettier, works better, less bugs). VLC contains a lot of codec, that surely meet your need

Edit: btw, some websites don't work on mac, simply because they require "internet explorer" there is no internet explorer anymore on the mac. microsoft drop support for it a while back ago.

 

Well, ripping a dvd on the MBP is slow as dirt. But really, running XP in Parallels (can't remember how much ram I gave it) was faster than on my AMD 64 3000+ running XP Pro.
Yes, some apps aren't the fastest because they're not a UB yet, but otherwise, OS X is very swift and sleek.
You'll find that if you boot into any other OS, that the mac is just as fast as any other similarly specced machine.

 

Of course ripping speed has to do more with your DVD drives read speed then the OS.

Anyways, there is a reason why you don't see Apple exactly racing against other manufacturers to have the latest and greatest out so they can make a profit, even know the profit computer manufacturers make off each computer is less than 1%, anyways gett back on target the reason why is simply because any computer with a unix or linux foundation can virtually run on any computer component out there no matter how old, and still run great. The point I'm trying to get across?

Well OS X has different system requirements than what Windows needs to run well, so technically drumfu is correct, it's not a fair comparision between the operating systems. However the average user doesn't care about that they want what gets the job done fast. OS X because of its design can run either on par or in most cases applications faster than the PC. Now this has held pretty true with Macs on the PowerPC processor thats because the PowerPC architecture featured something unique, to put it in layman terms think of it this way, when a processor is running a program and it comes across lines of codes that it finds that it has to execute over and over again, PPC caches it making access to it and doing repeating the process much faster, that give PPC Macs an edge however now that we are on Intel which isn't PPC here it has a similar design but not the same and as not efficent as PPC's, it might even the two out.

Now it really relies on what system has better memory management (OS X, its so sophisicated that Apple removed user-accessed memory controls because it's all dynamic) which is more advanced than what any windows platform uses. So another factor there gives OS X an edge. It also uses HFS+ which can defrag your drive on the fly to ensure contiguous files on the hard drive which enable a faster hard drive response. There are more, but I'm gonna stop because I'm almost writing a book here.

So to sum it all up. OS X has less system requirements than Windows to run the same speed and response time as windows does, therefore thats why Apple isn't concerned with having the bleeding edge technology. OS X has better memory management, and it features HFS+ filesystem, however we'll have to see what happens when all the major applications finally move over to universal to find out the real results, but technically speaking OS X should come out on top again. So really OS X's methodology is much better.

 

Aye, I know it's due to the dvd drive speed and all. But blah, I wish they could have put in a faster drive, and a DL one at that.
But hey, I'll probably still use my desktop to do all of that, as my I want to use my 100 gigs sparingly, and I'll probably be making a 20 gig windows partition soon.
Time to buy another external HD

 

Saud,

Since you are contemplating getting a new computer may I suggest that you make a list of all the applications that you “really” use and see if they are available for the Mac O. / S. or not. Chances are, all are with the exception of the games.

Once you’ve done that part, see if these Mac applications are in the Universal format or the older Mac PPC format (they both should run on the new Intel Macs, but the older format may run slower – someone care to correct me on this?).

Again, chances are, you’ll find all the applications you need / want to be in the universal format.

So, in a nut-shell, I would suggest you move over to Mac and get yourself all the yummy applications that you need and want – assuming you want to make that kind of a financial investment. If you’re looking to go with the MacBook or MacBook Pro then I would suggest you hold off for a short while since it is very likely that Apple will release Core 2 Duo, for these machines, before the Christmas holidays.

 

That's correct, older Mac apps that don't yet have Universal binaries available (capable of running natively on Intel Macs) will run a bit slower than a native one..... although part of that is just the overhead of emulating PowerPC code..... with 2GB of memory it isn't quite so bad. But definitely stuff like Adobe CS3 and Microsoft Office will benefit from the Intel native versions coming out next year.

 

Yeah, there is definently a notice in the speed decrease in CS2. Most of the time it's okay, but then it just stops for 2 or 3 seconds, then goes fine for a while.
2 gigs is the way to go