Macs slower than PCs?

I remember a lot of people talking about macs slower than PCs some time ago. Is it still true now? (I need an unbiased answer please, not that I will ever get biased answers here)

The two Operating Systems are completely different. I don't really think you can do a direct comparison of the software even with Benchmarks. Certain aspects of Windows may be optimized for better performance while certain other aspects of OSX may be optimized for performance. Hardware wise they are pretty much the same now.

You can only compare Apples with Apples...;D

I use both Macs and PCs, and both Windows and Linux on those PCs. My subjective experience is that Macs are faster at some things, about the same on most others, and slower here and there. This is based on my experience with my 2.3 GHz G5 running Tiger, which is roughly equivalent to my 3.0 GHz PIV HT Windows/Linux system (running Windows XP and openSUSE 10.3 respectively).

With that in mind, Photoshop and iTunes are significantly faster on my Mac. Firefox and Thunderbird are about the same on all three of my OS' - it is fastest on Linux, where openSUSE has a very clever preloading mechanism, and slowest on the Mac. MS Office is about the same on my PC and my Mac.

However, the differences between Mac and PC are not very significant either way (except for openSUSE).

So, for equivalent speed processors, I would say it is more or less a wash. Faster in some things, slower in others, pretty much the same in most.

Macs are going to be faster when it comes to booting up and shutting down and all that stuff, seriously though I have a home PC running Windows XP with a 3.00GHz processor and then there's my MacBook running Leopard with a 2.2Ghz processor and I have not found one task or application on my Mac that runs slower than it does on windows. But bootup and shutdown are noticiably faster which is great and something I always hate when i go back to use my PC

I think having a lot of software installed on XP slows the startup. I know my XP, 1.3GHz takes 5-10mins to startup and I have Office, virus/spyware programs, paintshop pro and a load more installed. This slows the pc down too.

I've heard that Macs startup quicker and are generally faster than XP no matter how many programs you have installed, but I could be wrong.

I'm learning here too.