The two major consumer operating systems that we all know and love are getting huge upgrades this year.
In one corner, we have Mac OS X 10.6,
[SIZE="6"]SNOW LEOPARD[/SIZE]Being touted as a performance upgrade, Snow Leopard refactors a lot of the stuff in the OS, removing a lot of the PPC code and making every app 64-bit. The result is not much surface change (although there is some), but a pretty substantial performance boost. In light of this, it's being sold at the reduced price of $30 USD. It was released on August 28, 2009 to much adulation as it arrived at everyone's doorstep after they rushed to pre-order it earlier that week.
In the other corner, we have
[SIZE="6"]WINDOWS 7[/SIZE]Mirroring the ME-XP releases, Windows 7 seems to have won everyone's praise again after the arguably disastrous Vista release. It features a revamped UI and a bunch of performance tweaks and compatibility fixes. It is what many say should have been Vista. It's a good thing that we won't have to wait five years like we did for Vista, as it is available to the general public on October 22, 2009. BUT, if you are lucky enough to be a part of the MSDN, then you can already get Windows 7, as it was released to the MSDN on August 6, 2009.
Basically, there are two fantastic upgrades for these two OSes. It sounds like both are worth getting. Are you planning on making the jump?