In a recent study was demonstrated that Mac OS X Snow Leopard is faster than Windows 7 in common tasks.

 Benchmarks run on a 2.53GHz MacBook Pro by CNET show that Apple’s own operating system is about 38.5 percent faster in multitasking with media apps than Microsoft’s platform and is also more responsive as a whole, taking less time to start up or shut down. iTunes audio encoding is also faster, though as an Apple program it’s expected to run faster in its native operating system.

No clear explanation exist, just that Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch feature is tailored to better juggle tasks across multiple cores.

Battery life is also much longer in Snow Leopard lasts up to 111 minutes in a stress test versus 77 in Windows. Thus has a greater level of independence with Mac OS X.

Mac OS X is only lower in the presentation of 3D graphics support. No software drivers optimization tasks, the platform is noticeably slower than Windows.

With these results we can establish that a better alternative is to buy a Mac when possible to take advantage of its extra speed and battery life and even having option to use Windows 7 if necessary.