Snow Leopard up to 10 percent more energy efficient than Leopard

For the user of a 17-inch MacBook Pro, the savings might not add up to a dollar over the course of a year. However, when spread across the 10 million or so Macs, Apple will sell over the next year, the savings in terms of dollars and kilowatts add up quickly.

News.com has benchmarked the energy efficiency of a 17-inch MacBook running Apple’s last-gen OS X 10.5.6 Leopard and the same machine running OS X 10.6. As you would expect, the latest and greatest iteration of the mothership’s operating system crown jewel, a.k.a. Snow Leopard, is more efficient — about 10 percent more so — than its two-year-old predecessor. Moreover, this improvement comes simply via software as the hardware tested in both instances was exactly the same.

“We took a 17-inch MacBook Pro and ran it though our standard energy use tests, first under OSX 10.5.6 (a.k.a. Leopard) and then after we installed Snow Leopard, which brought us up to OSX 10.6. Our test system, already Energy Star-compliant, had a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, and we had the discrete Nvidia GeForce 9600 graphics turned on.”

Multiplying fishes and loaves

Of course for an average everyday sort of user, even a parsimonious cheapskate such as myself, the savings are negligible and it would take 29 years of use to pay down the $29 single user cost of Snow Leopard (a Family Pack license could yield a 10-year payback timeframe). However, multiply the energy usage reduction across the 10 million Macs Apple will sell this year and the savings are much, much more substantial.

Yes, there are lots of other ways Snow Leopard’s gonna save you money, but don’t buy it just because you will save a few kilowatts and almost enough spare change for a single item — before tax — from the McDonalds dollar menu.

Nevertheless, that the operating system I just installed makes my already fully amortized MacBook faster, smoother, more stable and significantly future proofed is cool. That makes better energy efficiency the sweet n’ creamy icing on the cake.

All told that’s a lot more value than the pittance Apple got from me…

What’s your take?

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