Difference between partition and Swimlane

[rhkrhk]

Within an activity diagramm I can add a partition as an object and allocate other objects (i.e. Actions and Activites) to it.
On the other hand I can colour the background using the context menue to "configure a swimlane"

I can not see the difference between these to methodes to the end of structuring the activity diagramm, to see which Actor is doing what, looking for to many hand overs and the like.

[BURAK]

Try to see this one:
http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/activityDiagram.htm

[cerevro]

I think that semantically are the same, but you can use a partition (or several) inside a swimlane in order to specify a specialization of the swimlane.