NT vs UNIX workstations for engineering:
I'm not going to argue that UNIX workstations are not more stable at this time. Because I agree that is one of only 2 good reasons I can think of to go with UNIX over NT. However, I think the crash argument is overargued since occasional crashes, although undesirable, are (1) a function of the applications you are using [how well-written are they], (2) your NT workstation configuration, and (3) not as anti-productive as they seem. My perspective is from dealing with very large medical images which require lots of image processing, graphical manipulation, and various types of optimization.
I've found that NT crashes can be very tied to the type of workstation you are using. With one vendor (Tagram) we had a relatively large # of blue screens while with my current DEC dual P-166, I haven't had one single crash in over a year. DELLs also do quite well. One problem is that there is no single NT vendor and shoddy workmanship can cloud the whole NT vs UNIX debate. Also, I think NT 4.0 is better than NT 3.51. Hopefully, NT 5.0 will be even more bulletproof.
More importantly though, I think you also have to consider the richness of the environment. And there is a definite trend in porting all kinds of applications to NT. NT has probably the best software development environment available with multiple vendors all provide excellent products. The same is true of graphics applications and whole slew of other domain-focused applications.
As someone pointed out, having Sun as maybe the sole UNIX vendor won't be bad in that it removes all those variants of UNIX from the mix :)
-Bill |
