RE: It's the economy, stupid (was: Switching to Windows NT)

Boy, one things for sure...I am not going to take sides in this debate...way
too heated for me! :)

Having said that (and now wondering why!), it is apparent to most people
that work with large scale networking environments that Win NT is not ready
for prime time. (BTW, I am a NT supporter and user of many MS products.)

With NT, Microsoft is reinventing the wheel. They failed to learn from the
lessons of the various UNIX systems and consequently have wound up with a OS
that, while MUCH more stable than the consumer flavors of Windows like Win
95 and 98, is far short of the stability, scalability and security found in
the UNIX environment.

NT, at least around these parts, has been said to stand for "Not
Today"....kind of an inside joke at IT departments when asked when the
latest problem will be fixed.

I believe strongly that eventually MS will conquer the problems that they
built into NT and it will reach the point where it is a viable enterprise
scale server OS. But it won't be this year, or from the looks of the latest
beta (non)release of NT 5.0, even next year.

There are pro's and con's to all OS's. NT has its strengths and its
adherents just as UNIX has its own set of strengths and adherents.

For relatively small scale, non-enterprise applications, I feel like NT is a
strong contender. How small is small? Heck if I know, but the idea of
running more than 2 or 300 clients on an NT client-server system gives me
jitters. The idea that a bank, credit card company or other mission critical
system (say...a hospital) might rely on the largely immature NT system
scares the bejeezus out of me.

UNIX in all its flavors has a ton of advantages....open source code allows
for strong customization. Stability is rock solid. Server performance scales
vastly better than NT, at least for now.

Is one system inherently better than the other? (Emphasis on the word
"inherent" please!) Heck if I know. But UNIX is definitely more mature at
this point.

Oh well....my two cents.


Alan S. Atwood

"Before the beginning of great brilliance,
     there must be chaos.
Before a brilliant person begins something great,
     they must look foolish to the crowd."
- The I Ching

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