Upgrade comparison: Mountain Lion vs. Windows 8

I have upgraded two MacBooks (Lion 10.7.5) and a T60 (XP SP2) to the newest operating systems, MountainLion 10.8.2 and Windows 8, respectively. Here are my experiences during the upgrade process:

Mountain Lion

  • Price €17,99 family license
  • iTunes makes for an easy purchase and payment process
  • 64bit is standard since Lion
  • Download size 4,5Gb in about an hour
  • Burning a DVD is relatively easy
  • Installation is straight forward and fast
  • No license key
  • Migration is fully automatic and migrates all software, data and settings
  • Fully HW compatible from 2008 systems onwards
  • Good responsiveness even with late 2008 MacBooks
  • Good battery life as of 10.8.2

Windows 8

  • Price €29,99 single computer
  • Purchasing and payment in Germany is through Arvato, CC data go to a third party
  • 32bit or 64bit depending on previous OS word size (no choice)
  • Download size 2Gb in about 4 hours + some time for Installation Assistant
  • Burning a DVD is experimental
  • Installation is good for a Windows OS, but takes longer than MacOS
  • License key necessary, with a usual retyping procedure due to a necessary restart
  • Migration is rudimentary, taking only user data from XP
  • Good compatibility even with a Thinkpad T60 2007 (no visible conflicts), however specific drivers need to be installed separately
  • Performance is good, especially compared to Vista
  • Battery life unchanged to XP

While the overall process is an easy win for Apple in every aspect, it is remarkable how Microsoft improved Windows in this aspect.

About Grischa Ekart

Follow me on Twitter: @gekart. I am a trainer and consultant for AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Machine Learning and all things DevOps.
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