As I noted earlier this week, I’ve begun using a MacBook (the basic white model) and keeping a log of my experiences.
Yesterday, I received the adapter cable I needed to hook this
machine to an external monitor so that I could use it in a desktop
configuration. (A note to the thrifty: Don’t pay Apple $29 for this
mini-DVI cable. Instead, go to Monoprice.com and pick up the generic adapter for $9.96. With shipping, it was still under $12, and it works just fine.)
Now that I have this system up and running on a full-sized screen,
I’m ready to make some head-to-head comparisons with Windows. Because
this system has a mere 1GB of RAM, I was curious to get a sense of how
thrifty OS X Leopard is when it comes to memory usage. I was especially
curious to see how Leopard compares to Vista, which as been slammed by
critics as a resource hog.
To get started I opened Safari and opened a single web page, then
began playing an MP3 track in iTunes. With those tasks running, I
checked the results from Activity Monitor:
As you can see, the OS reports that 581MB is in use, with 430MB free.
Next, I launched a similar set of tasks on a system running Windows
Vista Ultimate. To make the comparison fair, I used the System
Configuration utility to disable all but 1024MB of memory in the
system, which has 4GB of RAM. This system is using the full Aero
interface (disabling it had no significant impact on the RAM
footprint). I opened Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, began
playing the same MP3 tune and browsed to the same page that was open on
the Macbook. Here’s what Task Manager showed for memory usage:
For those keeping score, the Vista machine is using 594MB of RAM,
which is roughly 2% more than its Mac counterpart running the same set
of tasks.
Vista gets a bad rap for lots of things, including its reputedly
voracious appetite for memory. As you can see, Vista compares favorably
to OS X in this regard and doesn’t deserve that reputation.
Source : http://blogs.zdnet.com/
