Xiaofan wrote regarding 'Re: [OT] Top-posting, is it really that bad?' on Fri, Nov 25 at 05:25: > On 11/25/05, Nate Duehr wrote: > > Chen Xiao Fan wrote: > > > 3) Outlook and Outlook Express are the de-facto standard. The IT > > > administrators are not all stupid by choosing them. > > > > That's debatable. Outlook in a corporate environment still does a > > few things that are completely non-email related that keep it the > > standard, but those benefits are slowly going away, and free or > > nearly-free [...] > My company was originally using Novell with Pegasus mail. It is > rather troublesome to use. Upgrade to Exchange greatly reduce the > problems. Pegasus mail was probably the problem, not Novell's mail server. It would've been cheaper and easier to switch to any of the common modern IMAP clients. I've personally adminstered a Linux-based IMAP server providing webmail and standard IMAP support for a userbase of roughly 30,000 people, and can guarantee that I had significantly fewer problems with that setup than peers who have run Exchange servers, even in smaller setups. This was in a college environment, where users changed frequently. > No Linux on sight for coporate world yet. We are still using Windows XP > with Novel server and IBM AS400 ERP server and Oracle server. Right now, I'm contracting for Intel. I test and configure Linux systems in a clustered environment, building the systems that performance numbers are generated from. Those performance numbers aren't just used internally, and we're not developing on Linux because no one uses it - we have a market for Linux clusters. Before this, I worked at another place as senior systems administrator, and we used exclusively Linux servers with Windows and Mac workstations. At another branch there were some Windows servers, though. In my 5 year tenure there, we experienced absolutely 0 downtime due to Linux, though we did have some hardware failures and power problems which would've affected any system. The Windows guy had few problems, too, but he had to spend more time tending to the systems than I did. Linux is more than capable of working well in corporate environments. A good admin is required, though a good admin is *also* required for any other system to be as stable. > And a Dell Windows computer is cheaper than a Dell Linux computer if > you want the support. Of course, the time lost waiting for Dell support in either case costs more than simply hiring a qualified sysadmin. I know a lot of systems people, but I don't know any who have to call some PC support line. Those support things - esp. in Dell's case - are only useful for home users who don't know what they're doing. > Do not get me wrong. I like Linux and I like open source. However I > do think that the free alternative is not that cheap after all in > the coporate setup. Changing from anything to anything else typically costs money, and that's often wasted money if the present setup does what is needed. If someone's running a Windows farm and has competent admins, they will obviously incur some initial costs in finding new people with skills in a new system and in transition time. But that doesn't mean that Windows is cheaper than something free - it just means that change costs money. Almost all of those TCO studies out there have a bias. For every MS-funded study showing Windows to be cheaper there's another one that shows Linux to be cheaper, etc. Personally, I've run both at different times for different reasons. I've managed to do more for less money with Linux, though. As far as I can tell, the only people who disagree with that sentiment either 1) have not used both systems or 2) didn't know what they were doing with one or the other ("unix is hard" people or "Windows is stupid" people). > > That's my opinion on it anyway... a server or server farm with > > appropriate RAID, speed, and capabilities for 10,000 users on > > Exchange is enormously expensive, compared to say a farm running > > postfix, Courier-IMAP, and clients running Thunderbird or > > Evolution. > > > Nanyang Technology University of Singapore has a massive Exchange > Server setup (20000 to 30000 users or more, including alumni > account, maybe 60,000 or more). It is said to be much cheaper than > SUN and Digital Unix based solution. The college I set up that mail server at? When I left, they hired someone who claimed to have Linux knowedge, but in actuality could just barely get around as a user, let alone an admin. But he was a Windows guy. So, within a couple of years he convinced management to switch over to a Windows system. The Linux system was a single machine with dual P3-800MHz and a pile of RAM with a RAID-5. It didn't have a single problem over the 3 years it was up, and had a load average of about 5-10% most of the time. Swithing to Windows required two faster machines, per MS sizing guidelines, and the user experience became slower. The machines regularly have problems requiring downtime, and generally are just "good enough". But through some blind pride ("we have a support contract and paid a lot of money for this!") the Windows solution remains. It cost more money (by an order of magnitude) than the Linux solution, and costs more admin time. > Web-based is the buzz word now. In the real world, I hate the web > service thingy. After they move the AS400 terminal based ERP > application to web-service, I need to spend 10 minutes on a 1minutes > task originally on the AS400 terminal. That's a result of poor user interface design. Lots of people think that they can just "web enable" things without giving thought to UI. It's my opnion that all CS students should have to take at least one course on UI design / screen ergonomics / etc before being granted a degree. Unfortunately, they aren't, and lots of web developers carry on with bad habits and poor decisions because they either don't understand who they're designing for or they don't know how people will use their app. It's sad, really, because properly-done web services can be quite nice to use. --Danny -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist