To check whether your system supports Windows 7 Download Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Windows 7 is on the horizon. This time next year we’ll either all be using it, wishing we were, or potentially wishing we weren’t. In the meantime, the beta of Windows 7 is out there – games developers and device drivers are testing code on it, and we end users are seeing if it lives up to our expectations. It’s already received favourable mentions from many, but how close to completion is it? That we play games on Windows at all is somewhat remarkable. Beyond the odd game of minesweeper or solitaire, Microsoft didn’t develop Windows as a gaming platform. Gamers flocked to it all the same though, because DOS gaming was such a chore. Indeed, that we’ve all stuck with PC gaming is testament to something – probably just our own bloody-mindedness, but it’s a testament all the same. DirectX was key to the big shift over to Windows and ever since then, Microsoft’s operating systems have been a means of getting our games running.

You've quietly rocked along with Windows XP for a few years and now you feel compelled to upgrade to Vista or the upcoming Windows 7. You've heard bad things about Vista or experienced them first-hand, and you've heard that Windows 7 is a promising replacement for XP. Which is it? Do you trade in your trusty friend for a known troublemaker or do you go with the shiny new operating system that's just over the horizon?

Microsoft wants to drop support for XP* but users don't want to give it up. Hardware vendors salivate awaiting your decision to move to hardware-hungry Vista. Should you face the situation and spend the money to upgrade, replace your computer entirely to Vista quality or should you wait for the stingier Windows 7? What to do? What to do, indeed.

Vista receives accolades from a discreet minority, and even those few who give it that shaky thumbs-up tell you to shell out the extra bucks for the latest hardware and maximum amount of RAM. Poor Vista weathers the slings and arrows of outrageous commentary from an array of bloggers, techies, journalists and stay-at-home moms from every part of the globe. Unfortunately, Vista lives up to most of the insults thrown its way.

Alternatively, Windows 7 has promise for those who want to wait for it. It's what we wished Vista would have been when released — its smaller footprint and more efficient use of resources make it a more palatable choice than Vista for those of you anticipating its arrival. Reviews of Windows 7 are mostly positive — very early reviews were not. Its performance receives the highest accolades and compares favorably to Windows XP in that area.

A definite Windows 7 release date isn't known, but its beta-release versions will stop working on August 1, 2009, so expect it on store shelves soon thereafter.

It might surprise you to know that Windows 7 has the same advertised hardware requirements as Vista. Microsoft also states that "It might also be possible to run the Windows 7 Beta on a less powerful system than the one we recommend, although we can't guarantee the results. **"

1 GHz+ Processor
1 GB Memory
16GB Disk Space
DirectX 9 Capable Graphics Card
DVD Drive
Internet Access

Although the hardware requirements are equivalent, you would have a hard time finding someone who's happy with their Vista-based computer running a mere 1 GB of memory. I have to believe that these requirements for Windows 7 are accurate since some new Netbooks will arrive preinstalled with Windows 7. Netbooks are a new class of laptop computer that feature light weight (~2 lbs), a small footprint (~9" screen size), inexpensive (less than $400) and long battery life (9 hours+). Some also sport limited resources such as 1GB (or less) memory and very small internal disks (4GB up to 160GB).

Whether or not you believe Windows 7 is "Vista with a makeover," one thing's for sure; Microsoft learned its lesson between the wholesome goodness of Windows XP and the sheer hell of Vista. Windows 7 is a frugal choice because your happy Windows XP-based desktop will be just as happy with Windows 7. Do you still feel like the choice between Vista and Windows 7 is a legitimate one?

To check whether your system supports Windows 7 Download Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Windows 7 is on the horizon. This time next year we’ll either all be using it, wishing we were, or potentially wishing we weren’t. In the meantime, the beta of Windows 7 is out there – games developers and device drivers are testing code on it, and we end users are seeing if it lives up to our expectations. It’s already received favourable mentions from many, but how close to completion is it? That we play games on Windows at all is somewhat remarkable. Beyond the odd game of minesweeper or solitaire, Microsoft didn’t develop Windows as a gaming platform. Gamers flocked to it all the same though, because DOS gaming was such a chore. Indeed, that we’ve all stuck with PC gaming is testament to something – probably just our own bloody-mindedness, but it’s a testament all the same. DirectX was key to the big shift over to Windows and ever since then, Microsoft’s operating systems have been a means of getting our games running.

You've quietly rocked along with Windows XP for a few years and now you feel compelled to upgrade to Vista or the upcoming Windows 7. You've heard bad things about Vista or experienced them first-hand, and you've heard that Windows 7 is a promising replacement for XP. Which is it? Do you trade in your trusty friend for a known troublemaker or do you go with the shiny new operating system that's just over the horizon?

Microsoft wants to drop support for XP* but users don't want to give it up. Hardware vendors salivate awaiting your decision to move to hardware-hungry Vista. Should you face the situation and spend the money to upgrade, replace your computer entirely to Vista quality or should you wait for the stingier Windows 7? What to do? What to do, indeed.

Vista receives accolades from a discreet minority, and even those few who give it that shaky thumbs-up tell you to shell out the extra bucks for the latest hardware and maximum amount of RAM. Poor Vista weathers the slings and arrows of outrageous commentary from an array of bloggers, techies, journalists and stay-at-home moms from every part of the globe. Unfortunately, Vista lives up to most of the insults thrown its way.

Alternatively, Windows 7 has promise for those who want to wait for it. It's what we wished Vista would have been when released — its smaller footprint and more efficient use of resources make it a more palatable choice than Vista for those of you anticipating its arrival. Reviews of Windows 7 are mostly positive — very early reviews were not. Its performance receives the highest accolades and compares favorably to Windows XP in that area.

A definite Windows 7 release date isn't known, but its beta-release versions will stop working on August 1, 2009, so expect it on store shelves soon thereafter.

It might surprise you to know that Windows 7 has the same advertised hardware requirements as Vista. Microsoft also states that "It might also be possible to run the Windows 7 Beta on a less powerful system than the one we recommend, although we can't guarantee the results. **"

1 GHz+ Processor
1 GB Memory
16GB Disk Space
DirectX 9 Capable Graphics Card
DVD Drive
Internet Access

Although the hardware requirements are equivalent, you would have a hard time finding someone who's happy with their Vista-based computer running a mere 1 GB of memory. I have to believe that these requirements for Windows 7 are accurate since some new Netbooks will arrive preinstalled with Windows 7. Netbooks are a new class of laptop computer that feature light weight (~2 lbs), a small footprint (~9" screen size), inexpensive (less than $400) and long battery life (9 hours+). Some also sport limited resources such as 1GB (or less) memory and very small internal disks (4GB up to 160GB).

Whether or not you believe Windows 7 is "Vista with a makeover," one thing's for sure; Microsoft learned its lesson between the wholesome goodness of Windows XP and the sheer hell of Vista. Windows 7 is a frugal choice because your happy Windows XP-based desktop will be just as happy with Windows 7. Do you still feel like the choice between Vista and Windows 7 is a legitimate one?

In one of its brilliant “I’m a Mac” ads recently, Apple lampooned the complexity of Microsoft Windows with a dizzying display of fine print that eventually filled up the screen and covered up both characters.

I thought of that ad when I saw Apple’s recent announcement that it was going to make its next Mac OS X upgrade, Snow Leopard, available as a $29 upgrade. That sounds so much better than the broad range of prices that Microsoft is going to charge its customers for Windows 7 upgrades. Too bad the $29 upgrade is not that simple. In fact, according to my analysis of Apple’s own sales figures, 57% of Apple’s customers who bought and paid for new Macs in the past five years are ineligible for those cheap upgrades.

That hasn’t stopped casual observers and even some seasoned analysts from falling for Apple’s ruse. Michael Gartenberg, for example, issued this critique in response to Microsoft’s announcement of Windows 7 pricing:

Apple showed the way. Snow Leopard is also not [a] major update but rather an enhanced version of Leopard. With an upgrade price of $29, that’s about where MSFT should be for the Home Premium version of 7…

Yes, $29 for an OS upgrade sounds like a great deal, if you qualify. But do you? I looked at the fine print for this offer, and was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to discover that the majority of Mac owners don’t qualify for that pricing. In fact, a significant number of Mac owners won’t be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price.

Details after the jump.

According to Microsoft, roughly 90% of Windows users purchase the operating system preinstalled with a new PC. And if you ignore the Hackintosh crowd, 100% of Mac owners purchase OS X with a new Mac. Any PC purchased with Windows XP or Windows Vista since October 2001 qualifies for a discounted upgrade to Windows 7, for a price as low as $50. But only a select group of Mac owners qualify for those $29 upgrades. A large number will have to pay $169 for the privilege of installing Snow Leopard, and another large group of Apple customers won’t be able to install Snow Leopard at all.

So where do you stand? Find the date when you bought a new PC or Mac and look in the table below. The Windows 7 numbers represent the cost of a Home Premium upgrade, which will be available for the next two weeks for $50 and then will be set at an estimated retail price of $120 after the OS ships on October 22. The upgrade cost is $0 from June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010, thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Option program.

Both Microsoft and Apple have announced technology guarantee programs for new PCs or Macs ordered before the new OS comes out. The Mac program starts on June 8, Microsoft’s program on June 26.

Apple’s core market for the $29 upgrade is its most loyal group of hardware buyers, who’ve already paid their “Apple tax” at the highest marginal rate. You qualify for that $29 upgrade price if you are one of the 15 million or so people who spent $1000 or more for a new Mac in the past 21 months. (Yes, I’m leaving out the Mac Mini, which sells for under a grand but represents a minuscule fraction of Apple’s sales—less than 7% according to one analyst’s rough estimate.) Any Mac purchased after October 1, 2007 satisfies the upgrade criteria: an Intel-based system running Mac OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).

Some most important Comparison

Price/Availability

Snow Leopard socks Windows 7 on both counts here: It's shipping in September for just $29. Windows 7 doesn't hit until Oct. 22, and we've heard it could be pricier than Vista, though it will, on the other hand, be cheaper for people who already have Vista. Nowhere near $29, we bet, but we can dream, can't we?

Storage Footprint

Both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are engineered to gobble less of your hard drive than their predecessors. Snow Leopard promises to give you back 6GB of storage—cutting out all the code for PowerPC-based Macs helped a lot there. Microsoft isn't touting how much extra space you'll have with Windows 7 vs. Vista, but an earlier version of Windows 7 used about 6GB of space, and they've been thinking about ways to make drivers take up less space.

If it says anything though, Snow Leopard requires 5GB of free disk space, while Windows 7 has a minimum recommended requirement of 16GB for the 32-bit OS and 20GB for the 64-bit OS—Microsoft doesn't put out absolute bare minimums, though the footprint seems to be about 6-8GB for Windows 7.

Startup/Shutdown/Sleep

Windows 7 smoked Vista with sub-30-second startup times, and RC1 is even faster. Shutdowns are quicker too. We had problems with sleep in the beta release, but it still seemed better than Vista, if not faster. Apple doesn't pimp a specific improvement in startup time, but promises doubletime wakeups and 1.75x faster shutdowns than Leopard.

64-bit

Windows 7 will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors—it's up to you to pick the right one (hint: 64-bit). The majority of Windows 7 install will likely be 64-bit—since you don't have to worry about compatibility issues as much as with Vista 64, and people are starting to want 4GB or more of RAM—so we're at a tipping point there. Snow Leopard will also more or less finish up OS X's transition to 64-bit, so it's something Apple's pushing hard as well.

Multicore Parallel Processing Powah

Some of the tweaks that Microsoft is making to the core of Windows 7 are to improve parallel processing—in short, using multiple cores to handle more simultaneous tasks than past versions of Windows. But these multicore-optimizing tweaks don't seem as extensive as Apple's parallel processing plans in Snow Leopard, headlined by what it calls Grand Central Dispatch.

What's key about GCD is that if it works like Apple says, it'll make easy for app developers to use multiple cores by handling threading for the programmers. The trick these says isn't the hardware, it's the software—the software tools that enable programmers to actually use multicore technology. (Just look back at our interview with Intel chair Craig Barrett, who explained why Intel hires more software engineers than hardware guys at this point.)

GPGPU—Processing Powah Continued

Again, since Snow Leopard is all about the plumbing, Apple's being the loudest about how they plan to tap your graphics card for even more processing power. Using the OpenCL language, programmers can more easily tap the hundreds of cores lurking inside of your graphics card for applications that might have nothing to do with graphics. OpenCL is a big part of Snow Leopard, if you haven't noticed. Snow Leopard will also use your graphics card for H.264 video acceleration (for smoother playback without overheating the CPU), if you've got a newer Mac with an Nvidia GeForce 9400M chipset.

Windows 7 also uses graphics cards more smartly than Vista—it has native GPU-accelerated transcoding and some other refinements in the graphics programming. But its big GPGPU push we'll see a bit later when DirectX 11 launches in July.

Browser: Do You Want to Explore or Go on Safari?

Sorry guys, there's not much of a contest here: Internet Explorer 8 is by far the best browser Microsoft has ever shipped, but when you consider it needs a compatibility list for all the sites coded for IE's past shittiness, the real modern web standards support in Safari 4 gives this one to Safari without even considering the other features. It's also wildly better than IE8 at handling JavaScript, which is pretty key in the age of web apps.

Networking

Networking is waaaaaaaay better in Windows 7 than it was in Vista—you can actually get to wireless networking with fewer than seventeen clicks, and the networking UI makes more sense. It also seems to be a little smarter at finding stuff on your network, at least in our experience. We're still not totally sold on HomeGroups, but hey, Microsoft's trying. And (sorta) easy remote streaming built into the OS? Pretty good.

Apple's not really promoting any changes to networking in Snow Leopard beyond the metric that it's 1.55 times faster at joining networks than Leopard it's got more efficient filesharing. You could argue networking in Leopard didn't need to be reworked—it was definitely better than Vista's—but really, networking is one of those things that's still not easy to understand for regular people in either OS.

How Long's Your Battery Gonna Last?

Windows 7 supposedly improves notebook battery life by a minimum of 11 percent. On the Snow Leopard front, well, um, all of the new Macs have much bigger batteries? Since Apple didn't drop a slide at WWDC telling the whole world, we can presume there isn't any benefit.

So Much Media Playing

Windows Media Player will handle pretty much any kind of mainstream video or audio format you throw at it, be it H.264, Divx, Xvid or AAC. The UI is better too, but it still kinda sucks 'cause it's trying to do too much (kind of like iTunes nowadays). But it has a few pretty great tricks, like "Play To," that'll command any compatible device on your network and stream stuff to it by way of the newest DLNA standard. Not to mention it'll natively stream your whole library over the internets to anywhere. Oh yeah, and Windows Media Center still rocks.

Apple doesn't get too specific on whether or not QuickTime X can now handle a broader range of formats with its fancy new logo, just that it'll play "the latest modern media formats" like H.264 and AAC even more betterer. It's also got a pretty classy new UI and supports graphics-accelerated playback (mentioned above). But maybe the best new feature is built-in video recording and trimming.

If all this talk of video codecs and file formats is confusing, read our (hopefully) helpful guide on the subject.

Backgrounds

Have you seen Windows 7 acid-trip backgrounds? Incredible. What's Snow Leopard got? Some stupid purple star thing. Apple background designers needs more drugs, plz.

Backup/Backup Time

Time Machine is simply awesome because it's so incredibly easy to use and implement. It's 50 percent faster in Snow Leopard. Our only gripe is that it's still all or nothing—a few built-in scheduling and content preferences wouldn't hurt. Windows Backup and Restore is definitely improved in Windows 7, with finer control over backups and descriptions actually written in English.

Dock vs. Taskbar Round 3

Oh, this is a contentious one. We think Windows 7's taskbar is pretty damn excellent and even said that it was useful than OS X's dock thanks to Aero Peek, which lets you find any window in any app smoothly and instantly. Jump lists, which give you quick access to common functions right from the taskbar icon, were also a nice touch. In short, with these features and stuff like Aero Snap, more usable previews, and Aero Peek mixing it up with Alt+Tab, Windows 7 has the best UI of any Windows yet.

Snow Leopard's UI is mostly the same, but it manages to improve on one of its best features—Exposé—and the Dock at the same time. You can actually do a whole lot more stuff from the Dock now, so you can easily drop files in whatever app window you want to. Exposé, my "I would die without it" feature in Leopard, now arranges windows in a neat grid, rather than scattering them across whatever space is available. Stacks is actually useful now too, since they're scrollable and you can look in folders within stacks in Snow Leopard.

Exchange Support

Snow Leopard's got it built-in, your copy of Windows 7 doesn't. Freaky but true.

Overall Snap Crack and Pop

Both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are designed to be faster, leaner, stronger and more stable than the OSes they're building on. Windows 7 is markedly more responsive, and you simply feel like you're more in control. We'll have to see with Snow Leopard, but if it lives up to Apple's promises, we're definitely looking forward to the performance prowess.

There' s a whole lot that goes into deciding whether you're a Mac or PC, but whatever one you pick, you definitely won't go wrong upgrading your OS this fall.

 Check out Celebrities for a Good Cause: Pamela Anderson does for a good cause ‘Save the Seal’ – PETA  – Celebrity Fashion Watcher.

In one of its brilliant “I’m a Mac” ads recently, Apple lampooned the complexity of Microsoft Windows with a dizzying display of fine print that eventually filled up the screen and covered up both characters.

I thought of that ad when I saw Apple’s recent announcement that it was going to make its next Mac OS X upgrade, Snow Leopard, available as a $29 upgrade. That sounds so much better than the broad range of prices that Microsoft is going to charge its customers for Windows 7 upgrades. Too bad the $29 upgrade is not that simple. In fact, according to my analysis of Apple’s own sales figures, 57% of Apple’s customers who bought and paid for new Macs in the past five years are ineligible for those cheap upgrades.

That hasn’t stopped casual observers and even some seasoned analysts from falling for Apple’s ruse. Michael Gartenberg, for example, issued this critique in response to Microsoft’s announcement of Windows 7 pricing:

Apple showed the way. Snow Leopard is also not [a] major update but rather an enhanced version of Leopard. With an upgrade price of $29, that’s about where MSFT should be for the Home Premium version of 7…

Yes, $29 for an OS upgrade sounds like a great deal, if you qualify. But do you? I looked at the fine print for this offer, and was shocked—shocked, I tell you—to discover that the majority of Mac owners don’t qualify for that pricing. In fact, a significant number of Mac owners won’t be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard at any price.

Details after the jump.

According to Microsoft, roughly 90% of Windows users purchase the operating system preinstalled with a new PC. And if you ignore the Hackintosh crowd, 100% of Mac owners purchase OS X with a new Mac. Any PC purchased with Windows XP or Windows Vista since October 2001 qualifies for a discounted upgrade to Windows 7, for a price as low as $50. But only a select group of Mac owners qualify for those $29 upgrades. A large number will have to pay $169 for the privilege of installing Snow Leopard, and another large group of Apple customers won’t be able to install Snow Leopard at all.

So where do you stand? Find the date when you bought a new PC or Mac and look in the table below. The Windows 7 numbers represent the cost of a Home Premium upgrade, which will be available for the next two weeks for $50 and then will be set at an estimated retail price of $120 after the OS ships on October 22. The upgrade cost is $0 from June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010, thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Option program.

Both Microsoft and Apple have announced technology guarantee programs for new PCs or Macs ordered before the new OS comes out. The Mac program starts on June 8, Microsoft’s program on June 26.

Apple’s core market for the $29 upgrade is its most loyal group of hardware buyers, who’ve already paid their “Apple tax” at the highest marginal rate. You qualify for that $29 upgrade price if you are one of the 15 million or so people who spent $1000 or more for a new Mac in the past 21 months. (Yes, I’m leaving out the Mac Mini, which sells for under a grand but represents a minuscule fraction of Apple’s sales—less than 7% according to one analyst’s rough estimate.) Any Mac purchased after October 1, 2007 satisfies the upgrade criteria: an Intel-based system running Mac OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).

Some most important Comparison

Price/Availability

Snow Leopard socks Windows 7 on both counts here: It's shipping in September for just $29. Windows 7 doesn't hit until Oct. 22, and we've heard it could be pricier than Vista, though it will, on the other hand, be cheaper for people who already have Vista. Nowhere near $29, we bet, but we can dream, can't we?

Storage Footprint

Both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are engineered to gobble less of your hard drive than their predecessors. Snow Leopard promises to give you back 6GB of storage—cutting out all the code for PowerPC-based Macs helped a lot there. Microsoft isn't touting how much extra space you'll have with Windows 7 vs. Vista, but an earlier version of Windows 7 used about 6GB of space, and they've been thinking about ways to make drivers take up less space.

If it says anything though, Snow Leopard requires 5GB of free disk space, while Windows 7 has a minimum recommended requirement of 16GB for the 32-bit OS and 20GB for the 64-bit OS—Microsoft doesn't put out absolute bare minimums, though the footprint seems to be about 6-8GB for Windows 7.

Startup/Shutdown/Sleep

Windows 7 smoked Vista with sub-30-second startup times, and RC1 is even faster. Shutdowns are quicker too. We had problems with sleep in the beta release, but it still seemed better than Vista, if not faster. Apple doesn't pimp a specific improvement in startup time, but promises doubletime wakeups and 1.75x faster shutdowns than Leopard.

64-bit

Windows 7 will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors—it's up to you to pick the right one (hint: 64-bit). The majority of Windows 7 install will likely be 64-bit—since you don't have to worry about compatibility issues as much as with Vista 64, and people are starting to want 4GB or more of RAM—so we're at a tipping point there. Snow Leopard will also more or less finish up OS X's transition to 64-bit, so it's something Apple's pushing hard as well.

Multicore Parallel Processing Powah

Some of the tweaks that Microsoft is making to the core of Windows 7 are to improve parallel processing—in short, using multiple cores to handle more simultaneous tasks than past versions of Windows. But these multicore-optimizing tweaks don't seem as extensive as Apple's parallel processing plans in Snow Leopard, headlined by what it calls Grand Central Dispatch.

What's key about GCD is that if it works like Apple says, it'll make easy for app developers to use multiple cores by handling threading for the programmers. The trick these says isn't the hardware, it's the software—the software tools that enable programmers to actually use multicore technology. (Just look back at our interview with Intel chair Craig Barrett, who explained why Intel hires more software engineers than hardware guys at this point.)

GPGPU—Processing Powah Continued

Again, since Snow Leopard is all about the plumbing, Apple's being the loudest about how they plan to tap your graphics card for even more processing power. Using the OpenCL language, programmers can more easily tap the hundreds of cores lurking inside of your graphics card for applications that might have nothing to do with graphics. OpenCL is a big part of Snow Leopard, if you haven't noticed. Snow Leopard will also use your graphics card for H.264 video acceleration (for smoother playback without overheating the CPU), if you've got a newer Mac with an Nvidia GeForce 9400M chipset.

Windows 7 also uses graphics cards more smartly than Vista—it has native GPU-accelerated transcoding and some other refinements in the graphics programming. But its big GPGPU push we'll see a bit later when DirectX 11 launches in July.

Browser: Do You Want to Explore or Go on Safari?

Sorry guys, there's not much of a contest here: Internet Explorer 8 is by far the best browser Microsoft has ever shipped, but when you consider it needs a compatibility list for all the sites coded for IE's past shittiness, the real modern web standards support in Safari 4 gives this one to Safari without even considering the other features. It's also wildly better than IE8 at handling JavaScript, which is pretty key in the age of web apps.

Networking

Networking is waaaaaaaay better in Windows 7 than it was in Vista—you can actually get to wireless networking with fewer than seventeen clicks, and the networking UI makes more sense. It also seems to be a little smarter at finding stuff on your network, at least in our experience. We're still not totally sold on HomeGroups, but hey, Microsoft's trying. And (sorta) easy remote streaming built into the OS? Pretty good.

Apple's not really promoting any changes to networking in Snow Leopard beyond the metric that it's 1.55 times faster at joining networks than Leopard it's got more efficient filesharing. You could argue networking in Leopard didn't need to be reworked—it was definitely better than Vista's—but really, networking is one of those things that's still not easy to understand for regular people in either OS.

How Long's Your Battery Gonna Last?

Windows 7 supposedly improves notebook battery life by a minimum of 11 percent. On the Snow Leopard front, well, um, all of the new Macs have much bigger batteries? Since Apple didn't drop a slide at WWDC telling the whole world, we can presume there isn't any benefit.

So Much Media Playing

Windows Media Player will handle pretty much any kind of mainstream video or audio format you throw at it, be it H.264, Divx, Xvid or AAC. The UI is better too, but it still kinda sucks 'cause it's trying to do too much (kind of like iTunes nowadays). But it has a few pretty great tricks, like "Play To," that'll command any compatible device on your network and stream stuff to it by way of the newest DLNA standard. Not to mention it'll natively stream your whole library over the internets to anywhere. Oh yeah, and Windows Media Center still rocks.

Apple doesn't get too specific on whether or not QuickTime X can now handle a broader range of formats with its fancy new logo, just that it'll play "the latest modern media formats" like H.264 and AAC even more betterer. It's also got a pretty classy new UI and supports graphics-accelerated playback (mentioned above). But maybe the best new feature is built-in video recording and trimming.

If all this talk of video codecs and file formats is confusing, read our (hopefully) helpful guide on the subject.

Backgrounds

Have you seen Windows 7 acid-trip backgrounds? Incredible. What's Snow Leopard got? Some stupid purple star thing. Apple background designers needs more drugs, plz.

Backup/Backup Time

Time Machine is simply awesome because it's so incredibly easy to use and implement. It's 50 percent faster in Snow Leopard. Our only gripe is that it's still all or nothing—a few built-in scheduling and content preferences wouldn't hurt. Windows Backup and Restore is definitely improved in Windows 7, with finer control over backups and descriptions actually written in English.

Dock vs. Taskbar Round 3

Oh, this is a contentious one. We think Windows 7's taskbar is pretty damn excellent and even said that it was useful than OS X's dock thanks to Aero Peek, which lets you find any window in any app smoothly and instantly. Jump lists, which give you quick access to common functions right from the taskbar icon, were also a nice touch. In short, with these features and stuff like Aero Snap, more usable previews, and Aero Peek mixing it up with Alt+Tab, Windows 7 has the best UI of any Windows yet.

Snow Leopard's UI is mostly the same, but it manages to improve on one of its best features—Exposé—and the Dock at the same time. You can actually do a whole lot more stuff from the Dock now, so you can easily drop files in whatever app window you want to. Exposé, my "I would die without it" feature in Leopard, now arranges windows in a neat grid, rather than scattering them across whatever space is available. Stacks is actually useful now too, since they're scrollable and you can look in folders within stacks in Snow Leopard.

Exchange Support

Snow Leopard's got it built-in, your copy of Windows 7 doesn't. Freaky but true.

Overall Snap Crack and Pop

Both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are designed to be faster, leaner, stronger and more stable than the OSes they're building on. Windows 7 is markedly more responsive, and you simply feel like you're more in control. We'll have to see with Snow Leopard, but if it lives up to Apple's promises, we're definitely looking forward to the performance prowess.

There' s a whole lot that goes into deciding whether you're a Mac or PC, but whatever one you pick, you definitely won't go wrong upgrading your OS this fall.

 Check out Celebrities for a Good Cause: Pamela Anderson does for a good cause ‘Save the Seal’ – PETA  – Celebrity Fashion Watcher.

Remember how there was an awfully confusing number of different versions of Windows Vista? Microsoft has decided it’s not going to do that with Windows 7. Definitely not. In no way are there six different editions to choose from.

To be fair, Microsoft is planning on pushing just two versions: Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional. As you’ve probably guessed, the first is for consumers, the second for business folks.

This is what Microsoft calls offering a “clear choice for consumers and business”. If you don’t naturally fit into either of those boxes, you can still pick from the full line up which runs as follows:

Windows 7 Starter Edition

Windows 7 Home Basic

Windows 7 Home Premium

Windows 7 Professional

Windows 7 Enterprise

Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft has also promised that each version will be a superset of the one below – so, for example, Professional will have everything that’s in Home Premium, plus more. There’s no more having to trade off business features in favour of consumers ones as could be the case with Vista.

Remember how there was an awfully confusing number of different versions of Windows Vista? Microsoft has decided it’s not going to do that with Windows 7. Definitely not. In no way are there six different editions to choose from.

To be fair, Microsoft is planning on pushing just two versions: Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional. As you’ve probably guessed, the first is for consumers, the second for business folks.

This is what Microsoft calls offering a “clear choice for consumers and business”. If you don’t naturally fit into either of those boxes, you can still pick from the full line up which runs as follows:

Windows 7 Starter Edition

Windows 7 Home Basic

Windows 7 Home Premium

Windows 7 Professional

Windows 7 Enterprise

Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft has also promised that each version will be a superset of the one below – so, for example, Professional will have everything that’s in Home Premium, plus more. There’s no more having to trade off business features in favour of consumers ones as could be the case with Vista.