> > In practice, the convenience approach can only work > so much, until the > > whole model collapses. It might work very well for > a single desktop > > system, but after a certain people to systems > ratio, the whole model > > can't support the needs of the user or users any > more. > > > > Ultimately, neither the "convenience > administration" nor a single > > desktop system paradigm will be able to survive > what will eventually > > come our way. The writing's on the wall. Desktop's > days are numbered; > > it might take years, but it will come. > > > > I completely disagree. There is a reason that Windows > as a server is > where it is today. Ignoring other reasons, it's > pretty easy to get setup > and running. In fact, in my opinion, that's one of > the reasons that RH > is as popular as it is ..... it was easy to get up > and running (of > course the support makes a big difference). This is > especially important > when moving someone from system X to system Y. If I > have to hack a > system to get it running the way my old architecture > was, I generally > will just forget about it and go back to where I was.
It comes down to money; you can probably outsource all your problems if you can afford to pay for it. Certainly the major OS vendors all have programs to help transition their competitors' customers to their products. But I think there's some point of balance on ease-of-use vs having some clueful people of your own, and I certainly don't think that Windows encourages a sensible balance; indeed, I think it just deceives, by making the learning curve shallow at the beginning and steep later on, rather than linear or steep at the start and shallow later on. The cost people think they're saving, they just end up paying later on, whether for support, or consultants, or in down time, lack of security, loss of data, or lack of flexibility. I've never seen a place that has a nontrivial number of both Mac servers and workstations, with presumably _some_ in-house support people; I wonder if they're perhaps a bit more clueful about how things _work_ (rather than how to read a cheat-sheet) than most Windows support people. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
