Let me play the devils advocate. NT is actually not a bad
solution for running every day task and some engineering
application (such as simple mechanical design and
image manipulation ... etc) .. because it is low cost.
(Some may argue that point with the introduction of the
ULTRA5/10 line which are unix stations with PC price tags).
However, let me pose a question. What if an image takes a week
to render? What do you do then? Is NT reliable enough so that
you may leave it running in the background while you use your
PC workstation to browse the web and to do word processing. Would
you trust that your machine would not crash while you are doing
these everyday tasks? What about if your collegues need to access
some other images that you've already done in the disk of your
system? (Remeber, your disk is already swapping chunks of
data like crazy.) Would you let your collegues access your disk
via the network? What if your job depends on this?
Let me give you an additional observation. Most people who use
NT based machine for traditional client applications and it
works great. But not many people use it under an intensively
networked environment (like sharing computing cycles and sharing
storage). By the way, that is when the machine crashes the most
often. If you want to see the critical differences between
UNIX and NT machines are, all you need to do is to set it up
as a e-mail, web, or database server so other people can access
it while you work. Then let the fun begin!
Another reason why you would want to pick UNIX workstation for
engieering related to the idea of scalability ... chaining many
workstations together to share computing cycle. So in effect
with proper utilization of the network, you build a mini super
computer. This is where UNIX excels. In engineering this
is called "job farming". You will hear this term more and more
in the near future.
- Chung
>>>
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
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