Speed

[bassi]

Why is Mac OS X so slow compared to my use of Windows XP pro on a laptop. Don't get me wrong, I've been using Macs for 11 years and love them for their ease of use, but recently I was using a friends laptop, a Sony, w/ a 1 Ghz Pentium and XP pro and it flies for just plain old email, browsing and using office etc. There must be a reason why the implementation of the Unix core is slowing things down. Can anyone explain this in detail?

I'm currently writing this on a Powerbook G4 667 w/ 768 MB of RAM and OS X.1.3.

[Phil St. Romain]

You've got plenty of horsepower, there.

What applications are you using that you find slow?

And what kind of set-up do you have for XP?

[bassi]

I run mail, opera, carracho, limewire, itunes, graphic convertor, illustrator and word X alot. I have to run classic for programs like Endnote and Kaleidagraph for work, my ram doesn't page out that often and I only have the one swapfile. I don't know my friend's Sony VIAO setup, except he's got a 1Ghz processor and 512 MB of RAM and that's about it.
I suppose my comments were more on the cosmetic side. The windows and apps are a whole lot snappier in XP on his notebook, in X you wait a few seconds for things to kick in. It's a small gripe and maybe I'm asking for too much. To be honest, I think I've just got used to the speed on my machine. At first it seemed real fast, perception is everything. I had a Wallstreet G3 so the difference was immense in OS 9.
I did a direct comparison with his notebook next to my Powerbook and it "felt" like it was just slower, although he was envious of the whole "look and feel" of the Mac experience.
One question, I'm running a firewall, Brickhouse, and I wonder if it's slowing things down a bit? My filters are a bit tight and I do have the logs enabled.