Mitch Ratcliffe has started a series of head to head comparisons between Mac OS X and Windows Vista. In the first round, Vista was KOed after falling, “flat on its face.”

Ratcliffe explains how he attempted to migrate from XP to Vista using the Windows Easy Transfer Application but had to give up and how his Mac successfully migrated over 60GB of settings and documents within an hour.

Migrating from an XP installation was halted by repeated failures of the Windows Easy Transfer application when used with a network connection and a so-called Easy Transfer Cable ($49 from Belkin, which was useless). I finally gave up and used Lenovo’s System Migration Assistant.

It took almost a full day to successfully move 5.6GB of user settings and documents to a Vista system. The Mac, by contrast, took less than an hour for migration of 60+GB worth of user settings, documents, and, unlike the Windows utility, the moving of applications from an existing Mac OS X install to a new one. The Mac is ready to go, except for the need to reinstall two Missing Sync for Windows Mobile application components, a couple of repairs to Parallels, the virtual machine enabling software from Parallels Desktop Software, and entering serial numbers when I launch applications for the first time on the new system—it has saved me hours of feeding discs into the system. Vista remains largely unready to use, because I still have to install all my application software on the new system.

I said it before and I’ll be saying it again…reinstall XP, or if you are due for a new computer try to get one with XP, buy a Mac, or try Ubuntu .

[tags]windows vista, microsoft, vista, os x, apple, mac, ubuntu[/tags]