Just wanted to say thanks for proving my point....

Good form there.. excellent points. I really dont know where the misinformation stems from.. been running Vista since a week before its official release. SP1 did improve the speed of the file system significantly. I would never buy a new PC with XP on it.

As for the clown who said the Mac Mini was the best investment ever... what are you smoking? That thing can barely run Safari, by itself.  I have one i purchased for the sole purpose of better understanding the Mac platform and OS and to troubleshoot problems integrating with a windows network a few of my customers have. Its not quick with Tiger, its graphics power is dismal, and its ability to multitask seriously is bad. Its only shining point is the under 30 second boot time.

No problems at my work with people saying Vista sucks..... Our trial Vista deployment has been completely abandoned!

Good to hear Dell will support XP until 2012, the performance gain is wonderful.

This isn't about regurgitated hate, it's about getting useful stuff done quickly and 100% compatibility with our apps.

Cheers...  

[quote]Finally, how all these people came out to tell me that Leopard runs just as fast on their old machine as it does on new ones.[/quote]

It's commonly known that OSX gets faster with each release whereas Windows gets slower. I've never used OSX (except briefly when checking out a friends laptop) so I cannot really comment on that area but I have browsed the net ever since OSX was release and talked to friends using OSX and they all say the same thing. If the Mac hardware supports it then the newest version of OSX that they put on their machines is faster. It's not a perception thing either AFAIC it is faster.

If you haven't used OSX yourself you cannot comment on this area yourself and if you do you are a fool. You cannot say that a new OS would run worse on older hardware than a older OS if you have never used those OS's.

"And one additional note to some of the supposed systems administrators out there who claim Vista runs like crap, even on brand new Dells, etc.  I weep for the people who employ you.  As some said of me, I hope your employer reads your comments and puts out a want ad.  If by some miracle you can't install Vista on a new Dell system and have it work well, then perhaps you should find a new career.  That may sound harsh, but I will stand by that to the grave.  That's pathetic.  Scream at me and call me all the names you want but if your excuse to your boss is that Vista sucks I'm sorry to say my friend, it is you that sucks."

How old are you? The format of this webpage is so condensed and so inflammatory that it gives the impression that the writer is very young.... No matter that's not the point.

Have you ever been a System Administrator? Have you run a helpdesk for Windows 9x, NT, 2000, and Vista rollouts? The System Administrators saying that "Vista runs like crap" have (or at least some of them).

FACT: Windows Vista requires 2GB of memory for a business operation.

I don't care if it's the receptionist up at the front desk who only opens Word documents occasionally. Vista crawls with less than 2GB of memory. I'm sure you could probably Vlite the install to death but this is a Business environment we are talking about here. Many businesses ignore this fact and install Vista on 1GB machines. This is where the "Vista runs like crap" comments come from.

FACT: Vista still has issues with drivers.

Whe started to receive Dell Latitude D630's from Dell late laster year and roll them out with Windows XP even today. I've been testing these laptops with Windows Vista since then. Using 2003/Vista 64bit any Intel video driver after May of 2007 will cause random reboots and file corruption that are VERY difficult to track down. AFAIK as of 2 weeks ago when I re-investigated the issue the issue was still there. (Only "fix" is to use the video driver from May 2007). Supposedly this also affects Vista 32bit as well but I haven't been able to confirm since I haven't had the time and the issue is very random. (We still don't deploy Vista so it hasn't been a priority either).`

FACT: Vista requires a fast hard drive. (7200 rpm).

Most of my users use laptops. Most laptops come with terribly slow hard drives. Due to all of the services running the background (Defender/Search), the HD will constantly be in operating killing performance and battery life. All of the dozens upon dozens of laptops I've tested with Vista (and XP for that matter) run ALOT better with a 7200rpm drive than a 5400rpm drive..

The above are only a few of the things upon many that must be considered when deploying Vista. Some of these things aren't Vista's fault alone but it doesn't matter. The OS is deployed on laptops/desktops where the above points are not considered and Vista gets a bad rap.

Ideally the OS would be smart enough to configure itself for the hardware that it is deployed on. (Disabling Defender/Search, etc depending on systems specs) so far MS has only done this with their POS Aero mabye they'll implement a better "Auto-Config" system in their next OS.

"And finally a note on those who said that Vista's missing of some 'promised' (which they never were) features makes it a bad OS I say this.  Microsoft, keep your ideas to yourselves until the RC phase unless people are under NDA."

Okay, let's say MS did not release any news of Vista at all. Now the OS is released and people compare it to the previous OS (Windows XP) and guess what people will still complain because the difference is not that big. Windows XP was released in 2001. Vista was released in 2006. That's 5 YEARS. Look how far Linux has come in 5 YEARS. Now look how far Vista has come. The difference is not that major.

Look at Windows 95/NT4. In 5 years we received Windows 2000. A major leap from 95/NT4. XP->Vista? Underwhelming.

"So, let the hate fly everyone.  Just do me one favor.  If you have seen the same point repeated 60 times already in the comments, try and come up with something of your own instead of repeating the same point in different words.  It really doesn't make you look cooler."

Happy now? I'm sure you'll come up with another MS fanboy remark refusing to realize that MS has had it's head up it's ass for half a decade. Hopefully now that Bill Gates is leaving MS might be a decent company again....hopefully not.

I've been using Microsoft OS's since MS-DOS 4.0 at home and have been administering MS OS's at work since NT4. I have been seriously sick of their issues and practices since XP was released and every time I see a hint of things getting better again they always do something to **** it up.

What's wrong with needing 2GB of RAM for Vista? Have you seen RAM prices? Very low so that isn't a problem.

PC's have always grown...we want faster, bigger, better PC's so why complain when an OS requires a little more power?

@ Dosfreak

Some of your points are very valid, with the background services running. They are very easy to disable then, takes less than 2 minutes. But still, thats no excuse for you as a person who is active in company deployments to not set it ahead of time. And if intel's piss poor driver support is stopping you, pick up $30 graphics cards that have proper driver support.

Matt, thanks for this article. You expressed feelings of happy Vista users (incl. me). You've got the point that new OS couldn't run well on old hardware. Isn't it obviously? I think it is.

So if I would be someone who didn't need Vista, I would keep silence, but most users that don't have enough money, time (and brain?) keep speaking that Vista sucks. But tell us true, maybe it is just envy? :P

Benchmark what? Basic tasks in the OS? Forget it. I included one in a comment, If you are going to ignore that so casually, it is obvious you would ignore any other too. And so you have moved from the uninformed column to ignorant. With that kind of closed mind, you should find a new industry. Software requires you to be willing to learn.

Oh, and people pointing out inaccuracies in your post? Even if you don't believe them, it does not "prove your point." it proves you didn't do any research.

I have to agree.  Vista works just fine on any new machine and most older machines.  If your system is to old, it will downgrade.  I have it running on a Compaq Evo NC8000 (1.6 GHz old processor) and it runs fine when you tune it a little.  And yes, even XP needs to be tuned.  

WinFS offered a lot of cool features.  Unfortunately, they cut this piece from the final build of Vista.  But then again, even though they cut WinFS, all the features are there.  So, what's the big deal.  Instant search works fine.  Self fixing file system is there.  I guess it is just an easy target.

Vista is bloatware.  I hear that over and over again.  Of course, I heard the same thing about XP and 98.  What feature would you take out?  I will happily admit that Vista takes up a LOT of space on the hard drive, as does every OS when compared with the last version, but hard drive space is cheep and I will gladly take up space on my hard drive for new features.  And since most of that space is used by features that don't take up any resources other than hard drive space when they aren't in use, what's the big deal.  Do we want to take out backwards compatibility (that would be nice for the apple fan boys, they would be able to point to that and say that MS dropped the ball on compatibility).  I would point out that backwards compatibility has very little overhead unless running.  Maybe we want to take out some features from Media Player?  Well, if you don’t like the Media Player, use a better one (there are many).  Where is this “bloat” and what problems do it cause?  I don’t see anything bloating Vista that I can’t easily turn off.

Ultimate Edition.  The name says it all.  It isn’t ultimate because it has Ultimate Extra’s.  Microsoft listened to the people and what they wanted and what they said they wanted was two versions of Windows.  One for home use and one for business.  The created them. They even put the uses for the OS into the name.  Home is for home and business is for work.  Home comes in two flavors, crap and premium.  If you bought Home Basic, that is what you got.  When you are cheap, you get what you pay for.  Home Premium is a very nice OS that will work for most users.  Business is designed for business users and lacks certain functions from Home.  These are mostly game profiles, media, etc.  Things that aren’t needed for work.  And that as an admin I don’t want my users to have at work.  Vista also has a secret (you must have a licensing agreement with MS) version named Enterprise.  The nice thing here is bitlocker.  I think that probably business and enterprise should have been one product, but I imagine that the marketing team (or design team) at MS knows their product and market a little better than me. Now, Ultimate (the description of the product, by the way, is for power users or enthusiast) is for people who need features from both worlds.  Not a lot of users fall into this category, but I do.  And so does our CEO.  I want to belong to a domain and have the manageability of Group Policy and at the same time be able to use Windows as a Home Media Center.  I want all of the functions for both work and play, because I use my machines for both.  I run Ultimate.  It has every feature from both Home and Business.  And it rocks.  Oh, and MS gave me a moving background and sound schemes with that, but who cares.  I got what I needed, what this ultimate version was created for, all the features of home and work.

I have been running Vista since Beta 2.  It has had growing pains to say the least.  Most of them, after it went live, was related to Drivers.  Microsoft did everything they could to push the development of drivers, but they don’t write drivers.  Manufactured of hardware do.  And they usually do it poorly.  Driver writing is boring, thankless work.  And it shows.  Nvidia comes out with new drivers all the time.  Each time they fix something and break something else.  ATI does the same thing, but each time they fix something they break two more.  Creative Labs gave up.  Not only do they not bother writing working drivers, but they even sue their fans when they do the work for them.  Point is, driver issues are the fault of the manufacture, not the OS.  And now there are plenty of good drivers.  Vista isn’t the only OS to have driver problems.  I remember hearing about several driver issues for Apple.  And don’t get me started on XP.  So, if you can’t get it working (I have it working on over 20 machines and many more if you include everyone I know that has it working) then you are not competent to support a computer. Or maybe you just aren’t competent to buy one.  If you can’t get it running on a Dell, maybe you should try buying from a real hard ware manufacturer.  Not someone who tests their hardware/software build for less than 2 week from time the latest software/hardware build is submitted.  HP tests for 6 weeks since the last change to the hardware/software image.  Leveno (if you want to trust the Chinese) tests for 4 weeks.  Even Sony tests longer than 2 weeks.  If you have hardware problems, blame the hardware, not the OS.  And learn to use a computer, for goodness sakes.  Before you comment, you should know what you are talking about.  Don’t flame a company for its newest OS because it makes your pet OS (apple) look better.  Don’t get angry because they took the time to do it they way they felt it needed doing.  I know it took a long time.  And I ran the beta for 9 months before it was released.  And when it was released I was disappointed because it wasn’t new anymore.  I felt let down.  Was this Microsoft’s fault?  Yes, it was.  It was their fault, because they were open.  I got the chance to test the OS, plan deployments, plan my personal use, report bugs and see what was going on.  MS, shame on you for not just springing this on me.  I should have been caught unawares by the new OS that everyone I know was going to ask me about the day it was released.  I shouldn’t have been able to plan deployments at work.  You should have just pulled an Apple and kept it secret until the last moment.  

Please remember I wrote this reply in a tiny comment box, so if you want to reply to this, please do so on the merits of the points I try to make, not spelling or grammatical errors. I already know I can’t spell worth a darn.

I just wanted to quickly gather up some links to articles I've found interesting of late. First of

"Since you all say that Leopard runs just as good on your 3 or more year old standard machine (not upgraded, as shipped from the factory with standard hardware) as it does on a new one, please, post some benchmarks."

Mac owners are not arguing that Leopard allows their three year old computers to run as fast as a brand new computer with the latest and greatest processor and hardware.

What Mac owners are arguing is that v10.5 runs as well as or better than v10.4 on the same three-year old computer.

A quick search with Google shows a number of people benchmarking Leopard against Tiger, and showing that for some older Mac systems, things slowed down a touch in some areas and sped up in other areas. One such page of reviews is here: <a href="macnightowl.com/.../">SO Is Leopard Really Slower</a>, and based on the stuff I read there I'd guess part of the problem has to do with Apple's increasing reliance on Core Animation services.

Again, however, let me reiterate that your original point was that Leopard was incapable of running on 3 year old hardware, and was Apple's way of driving hardware sales. Most of the benchmarks I've seen suggest that Leopard is quite capable of running on 3 year old hardware, and runs roughly the same as its predecessor.

You say you want benchmark proof that older Macintosh computers feel *more* responsive with new system software as compared with the old. Perhaps this link will be illuminating:

<a href="arstechnica.com/.../a>

The fact is, (now this is very important) *for the first time* an Apple system 10.x upgrade actually *slowed down* the older G5 Macintosh by *GASP* TEN PERCENT! The horror.

However, note the final line:

"Also, overall performance depends on more than just the CPU: offloading more work to the video card can make all the difference."

Also note the anecdotal responses on that page. (And it being an Apple-focussed blog it can hardly be characterized as "hordes of Apple fanboys descending upon some Wintard") Pretty much everyone noted that the older computer *felt* snappier with the new software. With each 10.x upgrade Apple has been very diligent to optimize parts of the system so that it runs faster on older hardware: they throttle interface elements and offload more work to the GPU. Even sometimes they use some trickery -- such as fewer "bounces" on the Dock when launching applications to make things feel "teh snappy".

Now you can go back to bashing and labeling people "apple fanboys" who disagree with your not-researched assumption or you can accept people at their word when they have *personal experience* that each software upgrade they make to their older systems actually improves their *subjective* experience.

Your first article was factually flawed, as was repeatedly demonstrated; it would appear that somehow you'll "win" this "argument" by switching to this new topic, then picking and choosing among the people who respond to make your case is actually fairly pathetic.

This guy tore you a new one here:

www.bynkii.com/.../oh_lord_here_we_go_again.html

Your specious whining and kvetching after the fact is rather sad.

Oh, and about that Readyboost crack -- big deal. If I'm having a problem with VM swapfiles I'm going to buy ram, not plug in some USB flash drive. My understanding is that ReadyBoost is a band-aid solution that only provides appreciable results for systems which have anemic RAM to begin with.

Is this post just blogspam or what? First you make uninformed statements regarding OS X and older Apple Systems. You are called on it by actual users and rather than concede you might be in error, chalk it up to them being "fanboys". Now you want them to post benchmarks? Your contention was that Leopard did not run on Apple hardware from 2003. Yet it does. I have 2 G4 Powerbooks (a 1.0 Ghz with 1 gig of RAM and a 1.5 Ghz G4 with 2 Gigs of RAM) and an iMac G5 all running Leopard quite nicely. Are they as fast as my dual quad core macpro? Of course not. That would not be possible. But what IS possible is to run OS X 10.5.x in a very usable fashion for all normal activities, like browsing, office products, music ripping and playing, movies, youtube and the like. In other words, the current version of the Mac OS X runs JUST AS FINE as the original OS that they shipped with.

Matt, the attitude you've demonstrated here and in the comments of your previous post is far worse than anything that has upset Apple users.  You really don't understand how to take criticism, and the fact that you seem to be pleased that many of your readers (not just people linked here, but your own readers) think you're wrong just makes you look very childish: exactly the attitude you claim to be refuting.  I'd hope you'll learn from this that the way you say things is what provokes flames, not what you are saying.  

By the way: Here's my Geekbench benchmarks for my 2003 model PowerBook 12" 867MHz, with the factory-supplied 640MB of RAM, 4200rpm disk: (By the way, this is my primary machine--I use it every day.)

10.4.9 (Tiger) : 363

10.5.2 (Leopard) : 325

I'd gladly concede that performance is objectively slower, but the difference seems to be remarkably small, and definitely smaller than what you've claimed.  I'd add that many operations in Leopard, such as mounting network disks, feel perceptibly faster because interface latencies have been reduced.  On the other hand, some new functionality like QuickLook is too slow to be used in quite the casual fashion it is intended.  You can argue all day about whether that counts or not, but I'm not really interested.  As far as I'm concerned, your assessment of Leopard's performance on older hardware is completely mistaken and founded more on a disdain for Apple than any real-world experience or measure.

No, Matt, the onus is on YOU to provide benchmarks to back up your statement.  You made the initial claim that Leopard doesn't run well on Macs 3+ years old.  As you have yet to provide any proof whatsoever to back up your statement, I can only assume you used it as a sweeping statement to help your little story.

However, looking at the number of views your other stories have received, I can only guess that your outlandish comments were purposeful.  Anything to drive up site hits and ad dollars, eh Matt?  Afterall, you can't always give away someone else's HP laptop.  

Calling yourself a CTO when all you do is maintain the family network is a little misleading to your faithful reader.

Matt, I don't think anyone's feelings are hurt (well, I suppose there's a contigent of people who have hurt feelings), so much as we're telling you that your are, in fact, WRONG.  You see, we get to tell you you are wrong because we actually use the platform. We would actually know how often an Apple computer has it's OS upgraded after purchase.  We're telling you it happens quite often.  Personally, I average 2 upgrades per system over it's lifetime.  Good luck doing that with Windows.

The fact is, each and very version of OS X has been faster _on the same hardware_ than the previous version.  It's true.  I'll even quote the John Siracusa's Ars Technica OS X 10.5 <a href="arstechnica.com/.../a>:

"Each new version of Mac OS X has been faster on the same hardware than its predecessor. I've said as much in my reviews, but the definition of "faster" is admittedly nebulous when applied to an entire operating system."

The kicker there is, the words said, as and much were links to the reviews for 10.4, 10.3 and 10.2 respectively where the exact same statement was made.  John, whom many respect, seems to believe that or he wouldn't have written it 4 times in 6 years.  For the record, John reviewed Leopard on two G5's (1 2G and 1 1.8G) and a 15" PB g4 from 2003.

What you fail to understand is that Apple pays for OS X development with sales of _retail_ copies of the OS.  Their reported sales for the OS are retail only; copies sold with the hardware are absorbed silently.  You are correct that each version of the OS is designed for the newest hardware.  It's insanity to not do that, but it's also insanity to ignore the existing installed base.  Ignoring the existing install base all kills sales of the other software packages they sell like iLife or iWork, or even the pro apps.  Apple likes to design in features in Applications that require the newest version of the OS, so they need to sell new versions of the OS.  Why would they do that if they don't intend to sell new versions of the OS to existing hardware?

You see the problem is, Matt, your argument simply doesn't hold water.  You can point and lampoon the rock throwers, but in doing so you ignore the large group of commenters with cogent arguments.

Matt -- thanks for writing these two articles.  It's so nice to see an experienced "Chief Technology Officer, entrepreneur and hard core geek...since 1995" raising such important issues.  A voice of experience is sorely needed in this field of "fan boys."  Your impartiality and maturity really shine through in your allowing these comments to be posted, and your comments about the comments, while dipping occasionally (understandably) into indignant defense are certainly worthwhile. You stated that you are not a journalist on your first article, but that really isn't necessary.  Only someone with a well-developed sense of the industry could write the insightful, well-researched posts you've presented.  Certainly, it's not pointless drivel written by a twit who  masquerades as a professional.  I mean it -- can we get a show of hands here?  I BET THAT NO ONE CAN PROVE THAT MATT IS WRONG -- BECAUSE HE'S NOT!  After all, he says so!

"Since you all say that Leopard runs just as good on your 3 or more year old standard machine (not upgraded, as shipped from the factory with standard hardware) as it does on a new one, please, post some benchmarks."

Classic strawman.

You said:

"how many Apple users do you know that own a 3 year old Mac, and install Leopard on it?  The silence is deafening. ...Mac OS's have never been designed with backward compatibility (hardware wise) in mind."

This error has been pointed out to you, and now you say that Mac users are saying that a 3-year old Mac with Leopard runs as fast as a new computer. Well, no they haven't been saying that have they. As no one in their right minds would because, and as a 'hard core geek' I'm surprised you didn't know this, computers have historically become faster from year to year (amazing I know).

The issue here is that an old computer has tended to run faster once you've applied the upgrade. My Powerbook G3 (2000) runs 10.4 (i.e. 7 years) better than it did 10.3.

"all these people came out to tell me that Leopard runs just as fast on their old machine as it does on new ones."

I didn't read every last word of every comment, but I did search through them for the word "fast" and found only one that made anything like that claim. That person compared a quad G5 to a Macbook (not exactly apples to apples), and only went as far as calling it "as fast if not faster."

For the most part, people, and I was one of them, only said things like "I run old hardware and it's fine" or "Newer releases of OS X are faster than old ones on the same hardware." That first statement is certainly true; the second was quite dramatically true from Panther to Tiger. Personally, I found it less obvious between Tiger and Leopard, but that may be because I'm still running relatively old G4s.

It is actually really quite trivial to show that Mac OS X 10.5 could run faster on ALL supported systems than Mac OS X 10.4.

First, look at the CPUs that Mac OS X 10.4 supported.

Now look at the CPUs that Mac OS X 10.5 supports.

Now look at the instruction set difference between 10.4 CPUs (certain G3s) and 10.5 CPUs (certain G4s). Yeah: Altivec. If the whole OS doesn't get worse (and with Mac OS X it doesn't), that alone oughta do something.

Actually Matt, no one was claiming that Leopard runs as fast on old Macs as it does on new ones. That was just your strawman.

What people have told you is that Leopard runs just as well as previous versions of Mac OS X do on the same older hardware.

And why do your comments fields eat all the spaces? I had to compose this in another text editor and copy and paste it in.

Alan

Next week, can you follow up with a defence of Windows ME? These posts could be the start a new campaign "Vista - it's not crap!"

arstechnica.com/.../15

Seriously, it is just as good on older hardware, and in some pieces of the OS it is faster.  Stop talking about things you do not know anything about.  This is just getting silly.  

Matt.

With everything you write I'm respecting you less and less. As a PREDOMINANTLY Windows based company, and myself a Windows tech, I find it disturbing that someone Microsoft is compensating sounds like the idiot here. MANY of the responses posted about the Mac thing have been well written, non reactive only RESPONSIVE posts. You asked for response.

Here's another thing... I don't consider RAM upgrading a violation of your, albeit new contingency about STOCK machines. We upgrade the RAM in all the computers we have here and most of them, Macs included, have limits to how much RAM they can take. All the old (5+ year) iMacs that we're running Leopard on have 1.5GB or less of RAM.

How about addressing your ORIGINAL statement... "I ask you, how many Apple users do you know that own a 3 year old Mac, and install Leopard on it?  The silence is deafening." Not only did people reply affirmatively, on their own they threw in that the performance is MORE than acceptable. That wasn't even your contingency. Go put Vista on a three to five year old machine with 1.5GB RAM. I DARE YOU MATT. We've got one here in our lab if you want to save yourself the time... Of course the irony is that once you try to use it you're in for the biggest time suck we've seen.

I have to admit, at the point that you started asking for benchmarks, I burst out laughing. THAT'S what matters to you? All these people simply stating that they effectively use Leopard on these older class machines are flat out lying? I'll tell you what "benchmark" matters most Matt... User issues in our tech queue. When you look at number of problems we get in OUR queue, the greatest number indexed for the percentage of user base installed is VISTA. The least is Mac OS 10.5.

This will be the last thing I read from you and here's why. When an intelligent person chooses to author something, they assume the burden of proof to back up what they're writing. What they DON'T do is say something like... "Mac OS 10.5 runs like crap on any hardware older than 3 years old. Prove me wrong!" And now you're scrambling Matt... and it isn't pretty. Instead of the obvious apology you should be offering, you're digging deeper saying give me benchmarks. IF you get anyone who decides to waste their time on you by giving you a benchmark, I have no doubt you will dispute it.

Man up Matt... and maybe tomorrow you won't lose the readership you lost today.

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Hmm, I notice he hasn't come back to defend himself this time.

I run a dual 1 gig PowerMac Mirror Drive Door from summer 2002 (with 1 gig of RAM), and it runs Leopard faster than it did Tiger.  At least it feels that way, and to me that's what counts.

Wow...this is perhaps the most childish, unprofessional, immature blog I have ever read.

In your original post, you made the following statement: "I ask you, how many Apple users do you know that own a 3 year old Mac, and install Leopard on it?  The silence is deafening." That statement was completely misleading, since Leopard runs perfectly well on three-year-old hardware, and in fact runs smoother and faster than its predecessor on the same hardware. If you did even a minute of research you would have found that Leopard requires a minimum of an 867 MHz G4 and 512 MB of RAM. A Power Mac G4 from 2001 is capable of running it!

I myself run Leopard on a 2005 PowerBook G4, and it is noticeably faster than Tiger on the same machine - Spotlight in particular is an order of magnitude faster.

But how do you respond when people call you out on this? First, call them names and make fun of them:

"put the Apple fan boy hated [sic] aside and be logical"

"Ahh yes the Apple fan boys are angry."

"Wow, I think I stirred up the Apple fan boy bee's nest and pissed off all 30 Apple computer owners in the world, and their [sic] pissed! :-)"

Next, complain that everyone is saying the same thing:

"As I read through them all (79 at the time I write this) everyone is saying the same thing over, and over, and over again.  Each of them, I guess thinking they are making a new point, repeat the same thing in their own words. ... So, everyone rehashed the same ones over and over, I guess thinking that their rewording would be found more intellectual."

Hint: people kept saying the same thing because YOU ASKED who out there runs Leopard on a three-year-old machine, and there are plenty of people who do, so they told you about it! If you ask a misleading question, don't be surprised when people correct you on it!

Then you twist people's responses:

"Finally, how all these people came out to tell me that Leopard runs just as fast on their old machine as it does on new ones."

Aside from that not even being a proper sentence, I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that Leopard runs as fast on an old machine as on a new one. That doesn't even make sense, since a new machine is obviously going to have better specs. What people WERE saying, however, is that it runs as fast or faster than Tiger on the SAME hardware, which is what you were doubtful of since you didn't even think people would run it on three-year-old hardware at all.

To top it all off, your posts and comments are littered with grammatical errors, run-on and incomplete sentences, incorrect punctuation, etc. But that's okay, because you're not a "journalist."

Go ahead and label me a "Mac fanboy" if you want (I'm typing this on a Windows machine, for your information), but to me that just says you're completely immature and unwilling to admit a mistake. Why not just politely admit that there's actually many more people who run Leopard on older machines than you initially thought? If you had, I wouldn't have felt the need to write this comment.

Pathetic.

You really are asking for a flame war. If you want the 'fanboys' to stop spamming your blog, stop posting poorly researched, biased crap!

This nugget deserves comment:

"And finally a note on those who said that Vista's missing of some 'promised' (which they never were) features makes it a bad OS I say this"

First off, do you actually use a grammar-checker? Secondly, Vista does indeed lack a great many 'killer' features as originally promised and heavily promoted by MS for Longhorn. Like WinFS and virtual folders. These DID exist. They dropped when Longhorn slipped. I'm a mac user and know more about the development of Vista that you do! Do your bloody research!

As for benchmarks of older Macs running 10.5, there's no point. You would never accept them anyway.

Echo what Peter L. said.  Echo what other mac users have said.  

iBook G3 900 MHz, 10.3 -> 10.4: immense usability INCREASE, machine dates back to ca. 2002-2003.  Running as a web server.

PowerBook G4 1.67 10.4 -> 10.5: again, usability increase.  Programs launch faster (actually faster, not just bounces).  

But I would like to underscore an issue that really is a paramount argument against some of your statements.  "Vista Capable" vs. "Vista Ready" - Intel ASKED MICROSOFT to REDUCE HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS on Vista.  Hardware vendors clearly were not ready for Vista's hardware requirements.  This was for *then* currently shipping hardware.  

I agree that Vista might be getting more than its fair share of bad press. You're not helping any.

This guy is so clueless that I'm not even going to try to be polite.  Anyone reading his spurious drivel (if you can make sense of it despite his dreadful punctuation and spelling) is best advised to move on. I wasn't even going to comment until I examined the contents of his blog archive, in which I found nothing but crap. I guess the good news is that he doesn't have many posts. If this blog is exemplary of  what Windows users have for online resources, I pity you guys!  

Wow. Matt's silence is deafening.

Absolutely awesome!  I stumbled on this blog on accident and the author’s opinion is almost verbatim what I think.  If you are a "Network administrator" and you can’t make vista work (especially on a new computer)....you are defiantly the weakest link.  Vista is a fantastic OS and has amazing features to anyone that wants to dig down and find out how to use them.  As an administrator, you have no excuse.  I say find a new job if this is too hard.

It's not just network admins having trouble with Vista, it's OEMs as well.

Case in point: I bought a Dell XPS M1710 about a month before the M1730 came out (doh!). I had the choice between XP Pro and Vista and I chose Vista (Ultimate).

From the factory, this heavy-duty, game-playing machine had a boot time of 3:41 (average of 7 cold-boots - I was bored, but not THAT bored). My old Athlon 3200+ desktop boots in about 4 minutes with XP Pro - but that's loading up OpenOffice's pre-loader, HP's fancy-assed printer drivers, Norton 360 and Steam.

I lasted about 2 months before breaking down and buying another copy of XP Pro (Dell wouldn't allow me to upgrade). Boot time is typically under 2 minutes now. I dual-boot Ubuntu for work, and that boots in less than a minute.

So if anyone really thinks Vista is a dream-come-true OS, the best thing that MS ever wrote, or is the future of computing, I beg you - do a side-by-side with XP on the same hardware.

*Note: Boot time was measured from pressing the power button until the main desktop was displayed and the hard drive light stayed off for 10 seconds (which was then subtracted from the time). Login was set to automatic on all OSes, and no hardware or BIOS changes were made. In Vista and XP's defense, the desktop is technically usable maybe a minute earlier than the measured boot time, but still nowhere near Ubuntu's sub-minute total time. I would do a side-by-side frame-rate comparison on some games, but I'm not installing Vista on my machines again (though 2 office laptops have it - I could do it right before we wipe those machines if anyone's actually interested).

"Post some benchmarks on the comments, I dare you."

Done.

"Should you be able to back up your claim, I will officially apologize on my blog for saying a new OS won't run as fast on old hardware as it does new hardware."

The silence is deafening.

I don't think that Microsoft has the option to remain completly silent about new features.  Microsoft cooperativly works with lots of companies; Dell, HP, Intel, and other vendors of machines, video cards, and other peripherals, and developers that will be making products that target their new technologies.  Because of the level of collaboration involved it is simply impossible for Microsoft to develop something as complex as an operating system without the cooperation of these entities.  There's a large surface area in which leaks could occur.

But as you point out there is a negative aspect of Microsoft's openness. For example, Windows Media Player 11 presented albums using their album art.  The next version of iTunes that came out after WMP11 Beta had album art.  When WMP made RTM it was said to be copying from iTunes.  Microsoft had also demonstrated an early version of their search tool.  Some time afterwards Google and Yahoo released search desktops and Apple added the feature to the next OS X build.  When Vista went RTM there were claims that this feature was copied from OS X.

Read the article and understand that the same reasons that MAC users claim Vista stinks, apply across the board to Apple Inc. Leopard shipped without all the claimed improvements. Every version of OS X that I know of suffers through "updates"  but if MS updates Vista its because it is buggy. Vista works great if the hardware will support it. I have it on a machine that is over five years old (but with a newer video card) and Aero works great, dreamscapes and all, from a machine you could buy on ebay for under $200.  Mac fanboyz are just jealous, now that the Windows interface is coming around we'll see how many artfags will spend the three thousand dollars instead of the $1200 or so for a Vista powered laptop.

We have about 30 G5 machines on our network and they all "require" 8 Gb of RAM to run Leopard and CS2, so any talk of Vista being hardware intensive is a joke.  Macs suck and PC's suck, its just that I have more money in my pocket running anything other than MAC. That means something...

Are you saying one needs to be a sys admin in order to get Vista working on a new Dell or OEM machine? Not exactly setting the bar very high there. When Vista first arrived I tried to install it on my wife's new Dell XPS machine and it was an absolute nightmare. I'm not a sys admin but I've installed Windows on hundreds of machines over the years. When Vista SP1 arrived I tried it again and it was still a pain but it worked. But it's really insane to expect your OS upgrade to expect people to possess Sys Admin skills.