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Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard Part (3) – Hardware requirements & Compatibility

September 19, 2009

We wrote quite a lot on the upcoming confrontation between the two leading commercial operating systems. The Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Apple’s Snow Leopard are due to be released, and with them so is the merciless uproar for grabbing as many users as possible. But we did forget to mention one thing. The personal computers did not appear today, yesterday, or the day before. People (especially in a time of crisis) who cannot afford to upgrade their hardware components would really like to know how these operating systems will work on their older machines; will they be compatible with the programs we already have installed or do we have to start from scratch? Here is what we have managed to find out.

When it comes to the hardware requirements, Windows 7 is quite the champ. Officially, it may require at least 1GB of RAM for the 32 bit version, but we have managed to run and test it on a machine that has less RAM and a Pentium 4 processor with only one core. The results were impressive.  So, even though, Microsoft officially announced that you would need a configuration that is able to run the previous system (Vista), things went quite smooth with a low-end pc. We will most certainly not complain about that.

On the other hand, all of the Mac users whose configurations have G4 or G5 processors installed will not be able to run the newest operating system. This is because Snow Leopard can only be installed on the Intel based systems that debuted in 2006. What this means is, you can forget about Snow Leopard if you bought your computer before 2006 (even at the beginning at 2006) and the processor is not based on Intel® architecture. This is the biggest setback, though the minimal requirements of Snow Leopard are identical with the ones of Win 7.

We cannot discuss much about the support for the external devices since the most important thing is the attitude certain manufacturer has toward an operating system. We had no problems at all when installing and operating external devices, such as hard drives, on Windows 7. We could also set up a router or modem completely hassle-free.

The situation in Snow Leopard is similar to its predecessors. You will be able to effortlessly install the hardware manufactured by Apple and the companies they cooperate with. As for the others, you will have to check if the hardware is compatible with the current operating system. If the device is compatible, the chances are it will be compatible with Snow Leopard as well. The same goes for the software.

The company at Redmond learned the lesson about compatibility between two operating systems the hard way – by dealing with the numerous issues in Vista. That is why, now every single application that ran in Vista will be compatible in Win 7 as well. Also, you will be able to install and work in applications that were not primarily developed to run neither in Vista nor in Windows 7. If not, you can always count on the Windows XP mode we wrote about earlier. With its help, almost all of the applications developed in this millennium will perfectly fit in and function in the new operating system.

As for Apple, things do not look so good, especially when it comes to software applications developed by a third-party company. One application, out of the many that may have issues, is Creative Suite by Adobe. Many users, even the company that is developing this suit claims that the Creative Suite 3 could very well have compatibility issues when running in Snow Leopard. Hopefully, with the release of the newest CS4 all of the issues will be solved.

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Tags: adobe, application, compatibility, components, cs4, hardware requirements, intel, low end, mac, snow leopard, vista, win 7, windows, windows 7