While (OSX was) second place in boot time versus one clean Dell system
Not really....
Dell Inspiron 1525 the best Windows7 Boot Time
stripped with every extra turned off, without many services.
The standard MacBook Pro 13" Boot Time
fully functional with all system services available.
The source's conclusion was that there were two really good systems on the PC side that both came with fairly useful "crapware" (I know, an oxymoron)...
"Other machines, meanwhile, proved far more palatable, offering the holy grail of decent software that didn’t prove too taxing on hardware. The Dell and Asus machines both included genuinely useful applications and also offered swift boot times and good performance elsewhere."
I note that the Asus and the Acer had a stripped, no extras, boot time of 43 and 40 seconds respectively which also beat the Apple's standard 49 seconds. . . so this article is not quite correct... but I again point out that Apple's boot time is to full functionality, not with functions turned off.