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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (108966)	5/2/2000 10:08:00 AM
From: pgerassi	Respond to of 1572310

Dear Jozef: I know of many businesses running on Linux. They may be small, but both the size and number is growing. Support is much faster and cheaper. Also it is a pleasure to be able to fix problems when you can see the source code to the stuff you need to fix. These companies use software like Star Office, Oracle, and custom written Business Applications. Most of the time, version changes grandfather old methods so that retraining is almost absent. They pay a much smaller amount, except for Oracle or Informix, than competing Microsoft products. Even applications do not crash. The only times the machines go down are when the hardware goes bad, the power fails (or a severe thunderstorm passes), or for maintenance or update (and sometimes not even then for multi-node servers (beowulf like)). Perhaps Microsoft has finally built an OS that does not crash easily. Kudos for finally getting it right, if so. However that does not say that Office, or any of their other applications, do not "Go Away". Much of their software do not adhere to industry standards. This restricts interoperability, a must at most large corporations. This is why Windows NT is not used in the Mission Critical side of the business. It still does not fail-over correctly from stories from others in the enterprise level. The apps at least probably need a few more years of seasoning, if Microsoft is willing to deliver well designed software. When a Mission Critical System goes down (even if it is the application), it can cost millions of dollars. The cost of the software is peanuts compared to its reliability. Microsoft has a ways to go. Pete