PC World decided to compare Vista and Leopard since they pretty much compete with each other. So I figured I had better step in and put an Apple biased perspective into the article... 
First comparison: Shadow Copies vrs. Time Machine
Really, is there a need to compare these? Yes, Vista has an incremental backup. Wonderful. However, as PC World makes out that having the backup on the same drive is a good thing, I'm wondering how useful that is if the drive gets damaged? At least they point out that the feature is only useful for the Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise editions of Vista. What they fail to mention is that it's active in all editions of the OS Meaning that you loose disk space in the Home edition and have no way of turning it off since you can't use it. So a 200GB HD winds up being probably about 150GB's or less. Way less than the typical loss of space due to the manufacturer claiming the *1000 size vrs. the *1024 size.
Gadgets vrs. Widgets
Not really sure why they are bothering to make the comparison here. Gadgets/Widgets are really not all that useful in either OS They are strictly fluff. I will admit that they are marginally more useful in Vista since they can live on the main screen instead of a Dashboard that opens when you press a key or click on an icon.
Explorer vrs. Finder
Here is a place where Vista could shine. Apple hasn't done much with the Finder since OS X's initial release. In fact, it is still a Carbon application instead of being Cocoa like most others. Mostly this means it's still 32bit instead of 64bit. However, it's really due for an overhaul. Yet, Vista's Explorer manages to make Finder look pretty darn cool. Vista has the usual Explorer views: Icon, List, Detailed, and Thumbnail. Finder has all that plus column view and Cover Flow. Now, for looking at your applications, Cover Flow is pretty silly, but for Documents, it's not all that bad.
Windows Photo Gallery vrs. Quick Look
Really, they want to compare these two? A feature in Leopard that allows you to see ANY document without opening the application that edits it versus a feature that lets you look at pictures only maybe videos too? Wow, that's really bizarre. Quick Look has to be one of the killer features in Leopard. Being able to open and view any document to see if it's what you are looking for is way more useful than just browsing pictures. I can do that in Leopard with Cover Flow and Icon view. In Explorer, you can do that in thumbnail view. I think PC World was just grabbing at thin air here.
Networked PC's vrs. Shared Computers
Another odd place to compare. Leopard has Vista beat hands down here. Both allow you to see networked computers, sure. However, Leopard gives you the ability to dig into your networked Mac's to the level of actually controlling them remotely with Screen Sharing. Oh sure, you can use VNC on a PC to do the same thing, but you have to install VNC on each PC in order for this to work. With Leopard, it's built in. The default is for it to be disabled. However, once enabled and password protected, I can not only connect and control a Mac in another room, I can also control my desktop Mac from across the country with absolutely no knowledge of how to set this up thanks to Back to My Mac and the .MAC service.
Enhanced Searching in Vista vrs Spotlight
Here is an area that Vista could have really stepped ahead and taken the lead. Spotlight has been out for over 2 years with Tiger. There have been quite a few attempts at Spotlight clones with Google Desktop, and the multitude of other search programs that could be installed in Windows. None of which really works well. Microsoft decided to add search into Vista and make it available in XP. However indexing in XP dogs the system, and I can't speak for Vista. On the Mac, indexing can be pretty slow too, but it doesn't take all that much time to do. For some reason, with Windows it seems to take forever. The PC World comparison actually gives Leopard and Apple kudos here. They say: "even on well-equipped Windows machines, searches are rarely as fast as in Spotlight; and by default, results aren't segmented or organized as cleanly."
Vista Desktop vrs. Leopard Desktop
Heh, there really isn't much to compare here. Vista doesn't have a built-in virtual desktop feature like Spaces. There are plenty of shareware/freeware apps to choose from though. Yet, even Microsoft didn't deem it necessary to update it's virtual desktop PowerToy to work with Vista. Are virtual desktop's necessary? No, not really. Are they useful. Sometimes. Especially on notebook computers where screen real estate is at such a premium. They also point out that there is no equivalent to Stacks.
Flip 3D vrs Exposé
Wow, what a totally useless feature in Vista. Flip 3D is totally fluff. There is absolutely no useful reason to use Flip 3D unless you want to "impress" your friends with an OS that boasts a 3D element. Exposé is useful in that it displays all windows as big as it can so that you can choose the one you need. You can do this with all virtual desktops, the current desktop, the current app or just slide all windows out of the way to see the desktop. The key is that you can see all windows entirely. With Flip 3D, you can only see the topmost window fully, the rest are mostly hidden behind the topmost window.
Apparently, that's all the comparison. There are a bunch more features in Leopard, but I guess that there are no equivalents in Vista so they didn't show them. iChat with it's ability to show slide shows and share desktops, Mail with it's Templates and integrated ToDo's and Notes. Odd since Vista has Mail, but I guess it doesn't integrate anything like Outlook does. I really can't say for sure since I haven't switched to Vista on my Windows boxes. I don't plan to for quite some time.
If someone reading this does have Vista, could you comment on Mail? Does Vista have an iChat type program "built-in"? I really would like to know.
(Via PC World - Vista vs. Leopard: Battle of the New Features.)
written by Dave M.
\\ tags: Apple, Carbon Application, Cocoa, Column View, Dashboard, Disk Space, Fluff, Gadgets, Hasn, Hd, Initial Release, Os X, Pc World, Perspective, Photo Gallery, Thumbnail, Time Machine, Typical Loss, Widgets, Windows Photo
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