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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?
MSFT 477.19-0.4%Jan 12 3:59 PM EST
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To: dybdahl who wrote (64318)1/21/2002 6:04:48 AM
From: Bill Fischofer  Read Replies (4) of 74651
 
It's a question of differing design models. Unix has its roots in the world of timesharing in which hardware was expensive and "users per processor" was the key design metric. Windows has its roots in the networked PC world in which hardware is cheap and "processors per user" is a more apt design assumption. To use a telecom analogy, Unix was designed for a world in which each household shared a single telephone while Windows assumes each family member has their own cellphone. Which model better matches the realities of the 21st century?

Windows will never be as good a timesharing system as Unix because there is no reason for it to develop such capabilities. Hardware is still riding Moore's law and processors continue to get ever cheaper and more plentiful. In such an environment to focus on a timesharing model would be a poor business decision on MSFT's part.

Windows easily handles the nondisruptive deployment of new versions of programs in a network model. This is done through group policy which allows administrators great flexibility in controlling which users migrate and on what schedule. So the function is there, just implemented under different design assumptions.
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