For those interested, my reply....
Paul, I don't know you so don't take the following personally, I am simply commenting on the contents of your post regarding Network Computers.
At one point, say about 10 years ago, you may have had a couple valid points in your post, but you have been out of touch for a long time or you just don't know what the heck you are talking about. Either way, it appears that you have never been on the fighting end of the MIS/IS/IT world or your opinions would be QUITE different.
I have been there, and done that. I have run networks and users in every sort of business from several thousand stations and a couple of mainframes for the American Banker's Association, to managing tens of millions of donation records and images in several very large databases for Bob Dole's Presidential campaign, all the way down to running my family's 6 node network in my house. I am currently a senior systems engineer with a well-known internetworking product company, in which position I am exposed to things *I* never dreamed of.
Paul, MY BIGGEST HEADACHE BAR NONE IN EVERY SINGLE ENVIRONMENT HAS BEEN SCREWING WITH AND HAVING TO RE_SCREW WITH THE DAMN PC's!!!
***Especially*** after Joe-Empowered-User has decided that HE knows better than US about how to configure the damn thing and then goes and does so. All this from someone who's entire purpose in life is to print form letters/enter data/view a spreadsheet/answer email or other "demanding" tasks that use about 1/32 of the power of the Pentium 166 on their desk that their dept. manager squandered company funds on because they "had-the-budget".
All of the other network components are funtional as engineered systems. The pc is a loose canon in the structure of an efficient org
An NC can do 97% of ALL daily office tasks just fine thank you. Let the 3 percent of the user population that actually NEEDS a PC or a SUN/SI, have one. But PLEASE take the damn screensavers/DOOM/sound-files/viruses/et al AWAY from the other 97% of the people that are actually supposed to be getting some WORK done!
As Director of MIS I was lucky enough to have a group of highly trained people, each with a HUGE workload and NCs would have reduced that to the point where I may have been able to keep some of the better ones instead of them burning out.
Lest you think that NC's are only for big shops, consider the average computer literacy in a small insurance or private CPA shop for example. Do THEY need more headaches? I don't think so. In my "spare" time I help out small-business in my community through our Chamber-of-Commerce and other organizations. I have seen the mess most of these folks are in AND the amount of MONEY they are spending on software and PCs only to use about 1/5th of the potential they have paid so dearly for.
If they had ONE configurable machine (the server) serving up files and applications and an NC on each desk, their productivity as a group would go up by about 30%. Additionally they would have the ability to "rent" a seldom used app from a remote WWW server, thereby NOT tying up capital in say, ACCESS, which they got (and were forced to pay for)like it or not, when they bought MS-OFFICE when all they really wanted was mail, a word processor and a spreadsheet.
The WINTEL upward spiral is a lie. People have started to question it. Finally.
For anyone that cares to learn more I am writing a paper explaining the paradigm shift to re-centralized resources and lighter desktops. It should be available Winter '96.
Scott |
