CNET have taken the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Snow Leopard for a spin around a 2008 MacBook Pro , and produced a decent first peek at comparative performance. Of course, there are significant provisos to get through first — it’s only one machine, running on Apple’s drivers, testing mostly Apple applications, and the two systems default to different versions of QuickTime — but we can still glean some indication of where the two heavyweights are relative to one another. Snow Leopard appeared consistently quicker in time-based tests, with faster bootups, shutdowns and MP3 encoding, but Windows 7 showed its muscle in producing better frame rates in games and a significant advantage in Cinebench rendering. Battery life was found to be distinctly better under Snow Leopard, but we’d put that down to the underlying hardware being optimized for OS X. Hit the read link for the full testing procedures and more of those old school bar charts — it should get you well prepped for the forthcoming flood of similar head-to-heads once WIndows 7 officially ships next week.

Thanks to all our Chicago readers who sent in their speed test data from their iPhone 3G and 3GS. Here’s our conclusion: the 7.2Mbps AT&T’s testing in Chicago doesn’t really make any difference right now in speeds. The 3GS turned out to be slightly faster in downloads (1202kbps vs. 1161kbps), but just about the same in uploads.