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Re: Wierd Stuff
From: Matt Simerson
Date: Friday, September 25, 1998
Time: 8:31:34 pm
On Fri, 25 Sep 1998, Alexi wrote:
> >All I know is some people may argue that macs are 20% more expensive or
> >something, but I don't care... if I save $500 by buying a PC, I will
> >spend about 80 hours a year maintaning the stupid thing. :-)
>
> I agree completely. I went out yesterday to set up a Mac client of ours
> (mind you, this was practically the first time I had touched one). It took
> my all of 5 minutes to get him up and running even though I'd never used
> one in that way before. Also, I REALLY liked the display...it just seemed
> much better...something I can't really explain...AND this was only a quadra
> running system 7.6! Can we say G3? Everybody...all together
> now...Geeeeeee Threeeee. <G>
In order to make a fair comparison, though shalt keep in mind a figure
called TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Although your MacOS hardware is more
expensive, your software is typically less. Then figure in the cost of
upgrades, replacements, and maintenance on the system over it's lifetime
and you arrive at the magical TCO figure. Most studies done on the basis
of TCO show that the MacOS platform is 20-30% less expensive overall.
I can vouch for this from my own experience. I've got a mixed platform
environment that includes all the following: MacOS, BSDI, FreeBSD, Linux,
WinNT, and Win95. The lowest TCO is definitely my MacOS machines. The one
on my desk (An old 8500/120 upgraded to 140MB RAM, (2) 4GB UW drives,
182MHz CPU) is over 3 years old and still performs admirably. It's
not as fast as BSDI on a 350MHz PII but it's faster than WinNT on our
PII/266. It's never had a component fail (unless you consider a 1.1GB
drive filling a failure) and over it's life has cost me less than $5000.
This TCO figures in the cost of the machine, the CPU upgrade, additional
RAM, two 4GB UW hard drives, 2 OS upgrades (7.6 and 8.1), and all the time
spend administering the machine.
The numbers are similar for the MacOS machines on the desks of my
employees as well. The TCO is just about identical to the price of the
hardware. That's because you spend a half an hour every year administering
the thing. The rest of the time it just works.
My BSDI/FreeBSD workstations are all above $10,000. That includes the cost
of the hardware (twice since I replace the machines already), the
software, and the time spent installing and maintaining it. I've found
that despite BSDI being a commercial OS and costing a small fortune to
purchase, the TCO is lower than FreeBSD because most of the work you'd do
to set up FreeBSD as a secure Internet Server is already done for you.
This comparison isn't apples to apples because the Unix machines do a much
different task then the desktops, so we get back to comparing desktop
platforms. I don't even consider win95 as a viable desktop OS in my
environment for many reasons (most dealing with stability, reliability,
and having to reboot every time you fiddle with a network setting) so we
only have WinNT in house. It's not quite a year old and it's TCO is about
$3,000. I got the hardware really cheap, the NT license free (thanks Dell
:) and only had to purchase software. The other half of the TCO is
maintenance. The machine does one thing, runs Filemaker Pro server. We've
played with it a little to do some fun CGI stuff and ODBC and couldn't
keep the thing stable under load. So, it sits and hums silently in the
corner doing almost nothing, exactly what it's capable of managing. Since
we stopped using it for anything but FMpro server, it's been great.
Keep in mind that the MacOS wasn't always great. It's suffered from WinNT
behavior during versions 7.1 through 7.5.5. That was a long two years.
Apple when crazy adding features and nearly cripped the OS. Keeping a
browser running under 7.5.3 required a lot of massaging. Apple learned
their lessons well and finally release 7.6 which solved all the stability
problems, cleanly integrated the feature frenzy of the past couple years,
and restored peoples faith in the platform.
They came out with the absolute BEST networking environment on any desktop
OS. Open Transport is the epitomy of goodness in networking code. You can
change settings on the fly and save all your settings. For example, on my
laptop, I have 4 different TCP/IP configs. Each config has the IP address,
dns servers, connection medium (PPP/Ethernet/ARA) and anything else TCP/IP
specific. When I take it to one of my POP's, I simply wake it up, tell it
to use the config for that POP and poof, I'm on that network. I walk into
a clients building, plug into their hub/switch, click on the config file
from the last time I was there, and *POOF*, I'm on their network, ready to
troubleshoot. There isn't a zillion confusing options on 47 different
screens either. Just one TCP/IP control panel with a few options. It
always works!
MacOS 8 is one of my favorite OS's of all time. It's solid as a rock,
let's apps crash and burn and seldom locks up the entire system. It's
fast, friendly, and doesn't eat a half Gig to install. Did I mention that
it's fast? It's also speedy.
I installed the final of MacOS 8.5 a few days ago. So far I've had it
crash zero times. Before running MacOS 8.1 and MkLinux on this machine
left me wanting. Now it's a dead heat between the two. 8.5 includes a
bunch more native code for the PowerPC processors and it smokes. I really
like it.
I don't have any G3's yet but it's getting closer to that time. I've set
up several for clients (I do a lot of consulting in the design industry)
and we like "test driving" them. The MacOS on a G3 300 is flat out the
fastest feeling OS around. It hammers. I'm composing this on a 350MHz PII
running BSDI 4.0. Why, because Netscape runs so blindingly fast here. Next
to me is my venerable Mac with Eudora, FileMaker pro, MacAuthorize, MYOB,
and all the other software I use to manage my business.
My next hardware purchase will be a G3. No question. Kevin will get an
8500 and I'll get..... you know the rest. :)
Matt
> I'm ready to start swithing over...our damn servers and our workstations
> randomly experience flaky performance, and I'm getting a bit tired of it.
>
> Alexi
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