Here at Stream Creative we pride ourselves in being at the forefront of adapting new technologies. I love testing the latest software, downloading new iPhone apps, etc. Upgrading to Snow Leopard seemed like a no brainer. My understanding was Snow Leopard was supposed to just improve performance and stability over OS 10.5 Leopard. Well, having used it for 2 weeks now on one Mac in our studio I have to say I am not happy with the results. In general, the OS seems snappier and some of the new features are nice, but I instantly noticed my web browsers and Mail seem slower.
Today I did some simple testing to see if my perceptions were accurate. Here are the results. Please note, I’m not an IT professional, just a guy that works on Macs everyday in our workplace.
Here is a Speed Test running Snow Leopard (v 10.6.2) – iMac 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo:
For comparison, here is a different Mac in our studio. Leopard (v 10.5.8) – iMac 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo:
As you can see, it will take me a approx a full minute longer to download a 35mb video clip. Here is one more test that I found particularly interesting. I ran the speed test one more time using the Snow Leopard machine, but using Windows 7 in Parallels:
The results from Windows 7 in Parallels were comparable to my colleague running Leopard.
My advice…if you haven’t done so already, hold off upgrading to Snow Leopard. I will continue to research the issue and report back if I can fix the problem or if I see any improvement through software updates. Please feel free to comment on this blog if you have any insights you would like to share on this issue. Thanks.
