Head to head: Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard

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In the second of our series of head to head reviews, we pit Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system against Apple’s Mac OS X update Snow Leopard.

Business use

But what will business users prefer? Apple is clearly making a play for the enterprise with Exchange support built right into the OS. This means that you can use Mail and not Entourage, which is part of Office but it does require Exchange 2007 at the back end. On Windows you need to add Outlook, but overall Outlook still has more comprehensive Exchange support.

As we described in our Windows 7 RTM review, this OS has PowerShell 2.0 system management tools built right in. If you run SharePoint services they will integrate right into Windows 7.

As for Backup, Windows 7 has been improved giving you more control, while Snow Leopard has faster Time Machine capabilities. Apple still wins for simplicity and elegance in execution here.

Nevertheless, despite Apple's efforts and an ever-improving ability to run Macs in a Windows environment, Windows machines are still the default option.

{b]Winner:Windows 7

Security

The headline feature in Windows 7 is the reduced annoyance from the User Account Control feature you can now turn it off and tone it down, and most people will be happy just turning it down a notch.

Windows 7 Ultimate sports Bitlocker to Go, which, if used, will help protect the data on memory sticks. There's also AppLocker, which lets you control applications on a corporate network via Group Policy.

Both have a firewall, but Windows 7 wins for having Windows Defender ready for spyware. Of course a third-party suite is still highly recommended but Snow Leopard's approach to security is still mainly to hide behind the shadow of Windows as a far larger target.

For that reason, we're giving this round, perhaps controversially, to Windows 7.

b]Winner:Windows 7

Benny Har-Even
Benny Har-Even

Benny Har-Even is a twenty-year stalwart of technology journalism who is passionate about all areas of the industry, but telecoms and mobile and home entertainment are among his chief interests. He has written for many of the leading tech publications in the UK, such as PC Pro and Wired, and previously held the position of technology editor at ITPro before regularly contributing as a freelancer.

Known affectionately as a ‘geek’ to his friends, his passion has seen him land opportunities to speak about technology on BBC television broadcasts, as well as a number of speaking engagements at industry events.