Folks at Popular Mechanics thought it would be great to see which between the Mac and the PC runs Vista better. Using similarly specced systems, benchmarking tools and user feedback PM were able to prove that Macs indeed run Vista smoother in real-world scenarios, the Inquirer reports.

Generally, testers throwing Macs and PCs head to head take the systems to their limits. This time, that didn't happen. Sure, Popular Mechanics made accurate measurements but the test was aimed at your average Vista user who merely surfs the web, checks his mail, plays a song or a movie... that sort of thing.

PM says they've tested "two all-in-one desktops and two laptops - one Mac and one PC per category - and assembled a panel of testers with a range of experience and preference that ran the gamut from expert users to my wife's stepfather, who, by his own account, had never actually turned on a computer." Glen Derene and team told testers to set up the computers "right out of the box" and run them through "everyday tasks such as Web surfing, document creation, uploading photos, downloading Adobe Acrobat files and playing music and movies through" popular programs such as Media Center and Front Row.

"In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple's computers were the winners," PM reveals, noting that "the big difference didn't come in [their] user ratings, where [they] expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine." Also, respondents praised "the look and feel of both Apple's Leopard and Microsoft's Vista but had a slight preference toward OS X," PM said. The conclusion...: "In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple's platform-switching Boot Camp software... and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did."

Have you tried comparing Vista and Mac OS X Leopard? Is there at least one aspect that lets Microsoft's OS triumph over Apple's (as a useful feature, of course)?