Windows 7 and Snow Leopard: My experiences
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
The dev tools for Windows are free too. http://www.microsoft.com/express/ Having them on the disc might be nice for a few people, but in general you're better off downloading the tools so you get the latest stuff. I haven't had any real experience with XCode, but several of my friends have, and each of them has said it doesn't hold a candle to Visual Studio. What kind of static code analysis are you looking for? The Microsoft C/C++ compiler includes PreFAST (/analyze switch) which works wonders if you use SAL annotations. For the .NET world there's FxCop. Does that not cover what you're looking for?
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The dev tools for Windows are free too. http://www.microsoft.com/express/ Having them on the disc might be nice for a few people, but in general you're better off downloading the tools so you get the latest stuff. I haven't had any real experience with XCode, but several of my friends have, and each of them has said it doesn't hold a candle to Visual Studio. What kind of static code analysis are you looking for? The Microsoft C/C++ compiler includes PreFAST (/analyze switch) which works wonders if you use SAL annotations. For the .NET world there's FxCop. Does that not cover what you're looking for?
Yes, XCode is not as good as VS in general. But it is getting pretty close.
BHPaddock wrote:
The Microsoft C/C++ compiler includes PreFAST (/analyze switch) which works wonders if you use SAL annotations. For the .NET world there's FxCop. Does that not cover what you're looking for?
SAL is close but I have never been impressed with it. Code Analysis in VS2008 uses FxCop(FxCopCmd) behind the scenes. The difference between XCode static Analysis and FxCop is that XCode SA is mainly to find possible errors whereas FxCop is meant to establish Framework Guidelines (though sometimes it can mean error detection).
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
Concerning the application compatibility, I have noticed that Matlab (ver. 2007a) is not running properly on Snow Leopard. When the application is started, many exceptions are shown on the main windows (they all concern Java issues). Even though, among the various functions I have tested, all seems perform find (I have to confess that I did not test so much advance functions, mainly basic calculations). However, the figures appear to not be properly displayed (e.g., the legends are weird, sometimes to the point of not being readable); the behavior of the interfaces (main and figures) are "strange" as well. We can read on the MathWorks website: “One of the potential problems users can encounter is Java-related, since Apple changed the behavior of the JVM to always use the current version. Additionally, they changed the default version of Java to be Java 6. MATLAB has only been qualified for Java 5 on the Mac at this time, but we expect to be able to qualify it.” Except this issue, I did not find any troubles with the other applications, including VMWare (XP & Vista) and The Gimp (that utilizes X11, similarly with Matlab). Unfortunately, I am still using MatLab under Windows XP, so I do not know if MatLab works fine on Windows 7. But I believe it should be ok...
modified on Monday, August 31, 2009 1:21 AM
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
(Namaste || Namaskaram || Vanakkum) Sri Rama, Very high-quality analysis and clear reporting, as I would always expect to find in your writing ! ==> 5 Am I correct in assuming that when you describe the development project you are doing on the Mac with XCode, etc., you are using Objective C and Cocoa ? If that assumption is correct, I can't help but wonder how you handle (mentally) switching from "thinking in brackets" to "thinking in" curly braces. I'd be happy with any upgrade/major release that really improved performance, or upgraded developer tools and apis, whether or not "look and feel" on boot had any obviously new "bright and shiny," or "winky-blinky," or not, but what can you expect from a jaded old programmer :) best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
There is also a big price-difference between Snow Leopard and Windows 7. The only problem still excist is a very slow Google Maps, because it is loading, loading, loading......... And that on a 4 Gb Mac ! The rest is working faster.
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
You cannot compare the both systems, one is Windows, and you can do all thing with it, and the other is just a mac.
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(Namaste || Namaskaram || Vanakkum) Sri Rama, Very high-quality analysis and clear reporting, as I would always expect to find in your writing ! ==> 5 Am I correct in assuming that when you describe the development project you are doing on the Mac with XCode, etc., you are using Objective C and Cocoa ? If that assumption is correct, I can't help but wonder how you handle (mentally) switching from "thinking in brackets" to "thinking in" curly braces. I'd be happy with any upgrade/major release that really improved performance, or upgraded developer tools and apis, whether or not "look and feel" on boot had any obviously new "bright and shiny," or "winky-blinky," or not, but what can you expect from a jaded old programmer :) best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
y'a know, ObjC uses curly braces as well! ;-)
A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my desk, I have a work station.... _________________________________________________________ My programs never have bugs, they just develop random features.
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You cannot compare the both systems, one is Windows, and you can do all thing with it, and the other is just a mac.
Besir Kasami wrote:
You cannot compare the both systems
News flash: Actually, you can.
Besir Kasami wrote:
one is Windows, and you can do all thing with it, and the other is just a mac.
This is not a PC vs Mac discussion. The OP is pointing out his experiences with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, both of which are operating systems.
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
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You cannot compare the both systems, one is Windows, and you can do all thing with it, and the other is just a mac.
What I read was an honest, unbiased report of someone's experience, with no "This OS is better because I personally prefer it!" nonsense. It deserves all the fives it got.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Yes, XCode is not as good as VS in general. But it is getting pretty close.
BHPaddock wrote:
The Microsoft C/C++ compiler includes PreFAST (/analyze switch) which works wonders if you use SAL annotations. For the .NET world there's FxCop. Does that not cover what you're looking for?
SAL is close but I have never been impressed with it. Code Analysis in VS2008 uses FxCop(FxCopCmd) behind the scenes. The difference between XCode static Analysis and FxCop is that XCode SA is mainly to find possible errors whereas FxCop is meant to establish Framework Guidelines (though sometimes it can mean error detection).
If you're writing in C++, PC-lint[^] is hard to beat for efficiency* - although it's a little tricky to configure at first it has saved my bacon on numerous occasions. * though they can't do web design for toffee - as the their site illustrates all too well. The tool itself is very effective, though. On one memorable occasion it spotted a nasty (actually a name scoping conflict) in production code which caused a behavioural change under certain conditions. After looking at the code in question we predicted the conditions, informed the testers what buttons to press and how it would fail - and shipped them a patch to test after they'd confirmed that the bug was there in the first place. It did everything we predicted - and that bug was only spotted because we ran a static analysis on all 250,000 lines of the code and took the time to carefully analyse the results. Disclaimer: I make my living from PC-lint integration tools these days, so I'm slightly biased I suspect!
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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There is also a big price-difference between Snow Leopard and Windows 7. The only problem still excist is a very slow Google Maps, because it is loading, loading, loading......... And that on a 4 Gb Mac ! The rest is working faster.
Google Maps works fine for me. Did you try reseting the cache?
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Google Maps works fine for me. Did you try reseting the cache?
Hello Rama, Yes I do do that, but it doesn't seem to help much.
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If you're writing in C++, PC-lint[^] is hard to beat for efficiency* - although it's a little tricky to configure at first it has saved my bacon on numerous occasions. * though they can't do web design for toffee - as the their site illustrates all too well. The tool itself is very effective, though. On one memorable occasion it spotted a nasty (actually a name scoping conflict) in production code which caused a behavioural change under certain conditions. After looking at the code in question we predicted the conditions, informed the testers what buttons to press and how it would fail - and shipped them a patch to test after they'd confirmed that the bug was there in the first place. It did everything we predicted - and that bug was only spotted because we ran a static analysis on all 250,000 lines of the code and took the time to carefully analyse the results. Disclaimer: I make my living from PC-lint integration tools these days, so I'm slightly biased I suspect!
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
No I have not tried it yet. I am tempted to try it now that I have realized benefits of static analysis.
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Concerning the application compatibility, I have noticed that Matlab (ver. 2007a) is not running properly on Snow Leopard. When the application is started, many exceptions are shown on the main windows (they all concern Java issues). Even though, among the various functions I have tested, all seems perform find (I have to confess that I did not test so much advance functions, mainly basic calculations). However, the figures appear to not be properly displayed (e.g., the legends are weird, sometimes to the point of not being readable); the behavior of the interfaces (main and figures) are "strange" as well. We can read on the MathWorks website: “One of the potential problems users can encounter is Java-related, since Apple changed the behavior of the JVM to always use the current version. Additionally, they changed the default version of Java to be Java 6. MATLAB has only been qualified for Java 5 on the Mac at this time, but we expect to be able to qualify it.” Except this issue, I did not find any troubles with the other applications, including VMWare (XP & Vista) and The Gimp (that utilizes X11, similarly with Matlab). Unfortunately, I am still using MatLab under Windows XP, so I do not know if MatLab works fine on Windows 7. But I believe it should be ok...
modified on Monday, August 31, 2009 1:21 AM
I did not expect that MATLAB uses Java. Is it just for the UI?
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(Namaste || Namaskaram || Vanakkum) Sri Rama, Very high-quality analysis and clear reporting, as I would always expect to find in your writing ! ==> 5 Am I correct in assuming that when you describe the development project you are doing on the Mac with XCode, etc., you are using Objective C and Cocoa ? If that assumption is correct, I can't help but wonder how you handle (mentally) switching from "thinking in brackets" to "thinking in" curly braces. I'd be happy with any upgrade/major release that really improved performance, or upgraded developer tools and apis, whether or not "look and feel" on boot had any obviously new "bright and shiny," or "winky-blinky," or not, but what can you expect from a jaded old programmer :) best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
Objective-C is just C/C++ code intermingled with smalltalk like constructs. It is not difficult to handle switching. The real fun comes when switching from C# to Objective-C back and forth. I kept on mixing the language constructs.
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No I have not tried it yet. I am tempted to try it now that I have realized benefits of static analysis.
If you do decide to use it, feel free to give me a shout and I'll do what i can to assist you in getting it configured to match your compiler setup.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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If you do decide to use it, feel free to give me a shout and I'll do what i can to assist you in getting it configured to match your compiler setup.
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Looks pretty good. Expect "Hlp plz" email from me as well if I couldn't get to configure it right. :-O
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
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If you're writing in C++, PC-lint[^] is hard to beat for efficiency* - although it's a little tricky to configure at first it has saved my bacon on numerous occasions. * though they can't do web design for toffee - as the their site illustrates all too well. The tool itself is very effective, though. On one memorable occasion it spotted a nasty (actually a name scoping conflict) in production code which caused a behavioural change under certain conditions. After looking at the code in question we predicted the conditions, informed the testers what buttons to press and how it would fail - and shipped them a patch to test after they'd confirmed that the bug was there in the first place. It did everything we predicted - and that bug was only spotted because we ran a static analysis on all 250,000 lines of the code and took the time to carefully analyse the results. Disclaimer: I make my living from PC-lint integration tools these days, so I'm slightly biased I suspect!
Anna :rose: Having a bad bug day? Tech Blog | Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
* though they can't do web design for toffee
This element has no style rules. Gasp!! :laugh:
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This month I installed and used both Snow Leopard and Windows 7. Here are my experiences and impressions: 1. Installation - Windows 7 Fresh install took me about ½ hour and Snow Leopard took about ¾ hour. Windows 7 was a fresh install where as Snow Leopard was an upgrade. Both the installations were smooth and went with minimum hassles. 2. Post Installation - Windows 7 gave me a feeling that something was new, right from startup with that nifty new animation and after startup it looked new in several respects. Snow Leopard looked very much like Leopard after the first startup and I was wondering whether the installation succeeded. Even now since all the applications look the same I don't have that "new" feeling. 3. Application Compatibility - I did not experience any compatibility issues with both the applications. Well almost, I started up a Mac application which I was working on and it crashed at startup. Snow Leopard changed the behavior of a certain framework method that caused the issue. Of course, once I resolved the issue the application worked fine. 4. Performance - Both the operating systems seemed to have improved the performance. Windows 7 much more so as Vista performance was pretty bad. Leopard performance was already good but snow leopard seems to have improved it a little more. 5. Programmer Stuff - Windows 7 has plenty of new stuff for programmers and so does Snow Leopard. In fact, Snow Leopard has stuff such as Grand Central and Open CL that can be termed "big". In Windows 7 I can't think of anything that is "big". Though there are several small things: DirectWrite, Windows Web Services, Sensor API, Ribbon API etc. Snow Leopard offers several similar small new things. One thing about Mac is that the development tools are free and come with the Operating System CD. The IDE XCode was updated with Snow Leopard. That part turned out to be highly exciting for me. XCode has a static code analysis feature which immediately helped me to identify a few memory leaks in an app I was developing. I wish that static code analysis feature that can detect problems was present on VS 2008 ( No, VS 2008 Code Analysis feature is not similar.)
Snow Leopard is worth it for the scrollable stacks, less space used and what apple call "easy text selection" imo. Smooth installation as always, but the most important point is a fair upgrade price. I loved Vista when it came out, and because of C# programming, I use Windows next to Mac (it's that good). But I don't like Windows 7. The UI changes like jumplist make it more cluttered, and I think that the slight color changes means there's less contrast in general. Also not loving the taskbar. I'm not noticing much more performance, less UAC annoyances (btw, rarely got UAC messages from Vista, only for updates and setting changes, similar to the password entry on a mac) and the price for an upgrade is too steep. My verdict: Snow Leopard is worth an update (if you can get it cheap), while I'll be sticking to Vista instead of upgrading to Windows 7.