Going back to Snow Leopard, Apple’s “screw tightening” upgrade to the Leopard OS being released tomorrow.

Here’s the hands-on review from David Pogue of the NYT.

In any case, Snow Leopard truly is an optimized version of Leopard. It starts up faster (72 seconds on a MacBook Air, versus 100 seconds in Leopard). It opens programs faster (Web browser, 3 seconds; calendar, 5 seconds; iTunes, 7 seconds), and the second time you open the same program, the time is halved.

“Optimized” doesn’t just mean faster; it also means smaller. Incredibly, Snow Leopard is only half the size of its predecessor; following the speedy installation (15 minutes), you wind up with 7 gigabytes more free space on your hard drive. That, ladies and gents, is a first.

And MacWorld’s roundup of coverage, from the lesser known features to comparisons to Windows 7, Microsoft’s similar “maintenance” release due in October.