[rescue] Re: [geeks] THIS. MAKES. ME. SICK.

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Al Potter wrote:

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> OK, I don't normally engage in this in public forums, but this is just too 
> much....
> 
> <rant><flame>
> 
> > To be fair, there are numerous people who have had NT machines with that
> > sort of uptime.  It also is a miracle that those people weren't cracked,
> > what with running such an outdated OS and all.
> 
> I call Bull$hit!
> 
> Point them out.
> 
> If they've been up that long (two years), which I seriously doubt, they are 
> obviously not patched to the current service pack, thus aren't even close to 
> safe to use for "real" purposes.  And we all know you can't patch (or do much 
> of anything for that matter) to an NT box without a reboot.  I also have a 
> HARD time believing that an NT box which hasn't been patched for TWO YEARS, 
> hasn't memory leaked itself into BSOD land.

Many people run NT servers that barely get used and that aren't exposed to
the internet.

OK, I can't quote anyone specific for NT achieving that uptime.  I've
heard people claim it, but I'm not going to take the time to find a
reference.  I do know that for several years now (and this is easy to find
references to) there have been companies guaranteeing uptimes upwards of
99.99% uptime.  Now, if they can guarantee that in a bad case, then
average or good cases for those companies should easily exceed 2 years.

> > I'm just saying that anyone who is familiar with Windows can set up an NT
> > workgroup server.  Before NT, you had to get a real admin in to set up the
> > new beast.  And workgroup servers don't really NEED 2 year uptimes, even
> > if it is something nice to brag about.
> 
> And this is crap too.
> 
> This is the real disservice that MS did to enterprise computing:  Selling the 
> suits on the idea that they could get rid of their "high paid" sysadmins 
> because (quoting you) "anyone who is familiar with Windows can set up an NT  
> workgroup server".  Bottom line is you need an experienced admin, period.  
> Otherwise, your stuff is eventually gonna flop in the wind.

It is quite a boon if you are small business trying to get started on
chicken feed.  Oh, lets just give up and shutdown because we can't afford
a real system admin to set up a server, even though us idiots could get NT
to work well enough.

> But they seem to have caught on....  is anybody else sick of hearing the 
> Foobar Training Network's ads for "MCSEs make an average of $65k a year"?

I don't think I actually know any MCSEs that make anywhere near that much.
I suspect that there are probably a few Cisco certified people here, and
perhaps some CEOs there, who just happen to also have an MCSE who are
driving the averages so high.
 
> > Thus, it wasn't any surprise that NT sold so well for file server use.
> > Plus the pricing was pretty friendly.  You can set up NT workstation as
> > a workgroup just fine.  With NT4, you are limited to 10 users, but under
> > NT 3.51 wrkstation, the user count was unlimited.  That meant, find the
> > old 486 laying around.  Add a new harddrive, stuff in more ram, and
> > install NT 3.51, and away you go, a new workgroup server for under $500.
> > Try doing that with Novel.
> 
> NT "sold" well for file server use for a couple of reasons.  First, if you 
> beta'd it, they all but gave it to you.  Second, try, as an exercise, to 
> bootleg a Novell server (short story, all but impossible for a clueless 
> newbie).  NT could care less, one license key can light up the whole 
> enterprise.  Yah, it's theft, but lots of folks did it, and MS tolerated it 
> because it got them penetration.
> 
> And $500 didn't buy very much RAM in the early 90s when this was going on.  I 
> still have the two 4MB 30 pin simms that I bought to expand my OS/2 box to 
> 16MB in 1993.  I paid $160 apiece for them, and got a steal.
> 
> And while we're at it, "the old 486" wasn't laying around, it was the 
> then-current workhorse.  The Pentium didn't come until 93.

Since I was talking specifically about 3.51 (is that the version that
really started taking over?  That's the first version I ever used, and I 
had used novell quite a bit before), we are talking about something like
1995.  At that point, 486s were often the old machine lieing around.  And
all you really needed for a semi decent file server was 16 or 20 megs of
ram.  Obviously not an enterprise class system, but enough to let a
workgroup save their word files in a reasonable amount of time.

--
Joshua Boyd