networking newbie

From: Julian Richardson <JRichardson_at_softwright.co.uk>
Date: Tue Dec 1 08:38:55 1998

>> Now let me get this straight. You say Linux worked -- that implies
>> that it was in place at one point, then NT was put in there and that
>> NT didn't work.

Ah, but there's the problem.

NT - about a day to get set up and working (or not at all in this
case!). Needs lots of hardware. Costs lots.

Linux - about an hour to set up, runs on old Pentium 60's (yes, I know
it runs fast even on 486 machines, but in this case a P60 was all that
was around and free). Doesn't cost anything.

Management - "oh, that's quite impressive. But we don't know anything
about Unix, but do know NT, so we have to stick with that".

Not that I'm rather stressed out at the way the computing industry
blindly follows the big players round (sarcasm mode is on here, folks!)
- but I run up against this brick wall time after time. People high up
in a company see something as a risk unless they have to invest lots of
time and money in puchasing it and supporting it - they just don't seem
to feel safe if the product in question is low-cost (or free!) and runs
itself without any trouble, even if such "features" are rammed down
their throats. It's a very scary industry.

>> you then wrote a _Java_ program to do
>> what should be handled by something two or three layers down?

yup, took about 30 minutes too. I got fed up with NT wanting to reboot
every ten minutes, the PC taking five minutes to boot, the
32x-speed-all-the-bells-and-whistles CDROM drive taking a minute to spin
up to speed before I could access it to install software... I'm sure
most of you have been there!

cheers

Jules

>
Received on Tue Dec 01 1998 - 08:38:55 GMT