>Why is everyone comparing whatever operating system with NT?
All of the other smug replies aside...
Windows currently claims an installed base of approximately 10,000,000 --
that's millions folks -- and Microsoft convervatively plans on NT taking about
10% of that base, i.e. 1,000,000 machines. By any account that is a shitload
of machines. More than the entire installed base of all Unix machines together.
Brotzman's definition of "shitload": any amount larger
than any one person wants to deal with.
We can make all the cute remarks about "MS-DOG" and "Windoze" we like, and
guess what, thousands of businesses are still going to generate billions of
dollars of revenues using applications based on DOS and Windows. Why? Because
it is cost-effective and easy.
Personally, I love Linux, otherwise I wouldn't have spent the money on an
additional 200-Megabyte hard drive just for Linux. But I haven't wiped my
MS-DOG disk because I like to be able to crank up Windows and Microsoft Word to
do simple word-processing tasks for my consulting business. I could do the
work in twice the time in LaTeX, but why bother? My customers expect
performance, not a product done "right" in twice the time (by the way, I
consider myself an expert in LaTeX, having written several style files and
Megabytes of documents in LaTeX; MS Word is just easier for simple tasks).
We of the academic world must come to grips with the simple fact that it is the
business world that really drives computer technology. Unix vendors can make
a buck from government and university systems, but until they have the
installed application base that a business needs, they are going to continue
being intimidated by Microsoft with their enormous market share.
-- Hughes STX DECNET: NDADSA::BROTZMAN
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-- Hughes STX DECNET: NDADSA::BROTZMAN