It takes courage to eliminate code from an operating system to make it more stable and reliable, as Apple did with Snow Leopard.

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"I saw a report on CNN with the Snow Leopard who qualified from Ghana for the Winter Olympics in 2010, " he explained.

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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.

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The stud-book keeper for the snow leopard, for example, is in Helsinki Zoo, and works closely with zoos in Russia, China, India and America.

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