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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frederick Smart who wrote (19031)	12/10/1997 7:13:00 PM
From: BP Ritchie	Respond to of 42771

Thanks Fredrick! You've done all of us 'longs' a valuable service. I would like to 'tweek' your perspective a bit regarding your statements: > What's going to really kick this thing in the right direction is the realization that a thick-client not the best way to go. The Pentium hogs we have under our desks take up too much space, burn out frequently, cost a lot to administer and are not as secure as they should be. Sure, the prices are coming down, but do we really need 62 megs, 4.5 gigs, and enough Mhz for all the full motion sound and video we will never need or use. < People really do need the 'Pentium hogs' to effectively use most of the neat features of the user interface ... and really do need a 'massive' amount of RAM (Min 64 Meg) and local storage (Min 3 GB) to take advantage of the information feeds and 'programming' (some push, some pull, some subscription) ... in fact only the very fastest Pentium Processor available today will be adequate to support many of the new functions being developed right now. The most important point of difference between Netware and Windows (incl NT) to consider is related to the basic design point ... Windows main purpose is to be an effective user interface, which basically means it must be able to connect & support whatever peripheral device the user wants (which means lots of 3rd party code ... which means low MTBF) and the overall design priority MUST be to be responsive to the user ... ie Display and input (mouse, keyboard) will ultimately crowd out other processes (like network & file support) ... just think what most users do when their PC Display no longer responds properly to their mouse or keyboard commands. Netware main purpose was originally File and Printer sharing, the most important design priority is reliability, followed by 'performance' of the file system ... this allows a very significant improvement in overall reliability through greatly simplified device support requirements and a much tighter focus on solid hardware interfaces. With recent changes the Shared File system has become 'the network' and now that the underlying communication protocol is changing to IP, it is becoming a 'public standard network' ... the addition of NDS makes the whole network much easier to manage, and for individual users it makes 'resources' much easier to find and use. A 'sales proposal' that suggests that the user's don't really need the powerful PCs that they probably want to buy anyway for all of the 'neat stuff' that they might want to do is going to run into a lot of resistance from users, even it they only want them as 'toys'. A 'sales proposal' that emphasizes reliability, lower support effort/cost and better network performance will probably garner a lot of user support. For several years to come, the performance bottle neck for almost all 'networked' computers will remain the communication link connecting the computers. There are many Netware related features to 'lighten the load' on the connection circuits (e.g. Replication Services) and make much more effective use of the most expensive and least available resource in the whole system (the wiring & switches) that simply cannot be matched by any other vendor ... because they are managed within the NDS structure. If you get to talk with this customer again ... please let me know what happens, particularily what the Novell Sales Rep does with the lead you gave to him/her. Thanks!