Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 12:02:32 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Cc: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu, Domingo Siliceo <dsiliceo@adam.es>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Opinions? Message-ID: <1073.837630152@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 17 Jul 1996 09:10:54 PDT." <199607171610.JAA05923@MindBender.HeadCandy.com>
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> learn all the quirkiness of Unix. NT and OS/2 are just better > solutions than Unix for many of these people. And NT is a better > server product in so many ways than OS/2. Plus, NT is a better > business "workstation" OS than Unix because of all the business > applications it runs. While I don't disagree with any of your major points, and agree that NT is *definitely* something we should be afraid (very afraid) of, I think you missed one important point about it which Microsoft will be the last to mention in their sales hype: Cost. Task: Create a small ISP using 3 or 4 PCs which will provide web service, POP email accounts, News, DNS, dial-in SLIP/PPP and general routing. Say we're also projecting between 500-1000 users as our target customer base within a 6 month timeframe (and, assuming we live in an area where coverage is still somewhat spotty, that's not an unrealistic expectation at all) so we need to make sure we can grow into that without too much pain since we'll already be going insane trying to get the billing set up, the tech support hotline staffed, etc. The last thing we need is for our tech to run out of steam halfway down the line. Now, go price 3 copies of NT Server plus the 1000 user commercial pop package you'll have to buy along with the relevant DNS, News and SLIP/PPP software (also throw in NFS so that you can eventually share filesystems with that SGI Challenge machine you've got your lustful eyes on and will buy once you hit 500 users to take some of the load off). See the total you're quoted. Suffer heart failure. Be revived by paramedics. Send $39.95 from your hospital bed to Walnut Creek CDROM for *one* copy of FreeBSD and swear off Microsoft forever. :-) Seriously, NT looks attractive from a single-user standpoint, I'll give it full marks for that, but once you try and put together even half of the packages you get for free under UNIX to create a small ISP or business server application, you're talking some serious bucks and, from everything I've heard, you won't even get close to the performance of a well-tuned *BSD box doing the same thing once you're done. Eventually I suppose that Microsoft will catch on to this and/or the free software community will provide some of the missing pieces, but that doesn't help today's customers very much. Jordan
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