A Strategic Comparison of Windows Vs. Unix

Ramsed writes "On LinuxWorld Paul Murphy wrote an article comparing Unix and Windows for a 500-student system and a 5,000-user manufacturing company. Summary: Most of the Windows versus Unix debate has been cast in terms of which is technically better or which is cheaper, but the real question is, 'Under what circumstances is it smarter to pick one technology rather than the other?'"

Comments

Re:Condition? How Smart Do You Think Your People A

[orange_6]

Having working in a campus environment for a good part of the last 4 years I can say that not everyone wants to learn something new, let alone spend the time to familiarize themselves with software packages they are unfamiliar with. Only students of Comp. Sci/Comp. Eng. are for the most part willing to do this, and even some of them are not.

While the article states that there would be the need for only a single *nix support position, and four Windows support positions, we must think of this: How many additional postitions would have to be created to train students (even rudimentary training) for an infrastructure they are not accustomed to? I would guess at least 10, but depending on the size of said campus, it could grow to an exorbant amount, overshadowing the cost of the initial startup costs.

The campus I am at now is a great example (Northern Illinois) and especially the labs I work in (art/music). There are plenty of Mac's here for people to use, but unless they are die-hard Mac-heads or it is required to use them for a class, 99% of the students stay away from them for the sole reason that it is unfamiliar territory. This made the campus cut down to a single Mac support position for the entire campus (which has over 200 macs), solely because of peoples inability to accept things that are different.

Look at the makeup of the world's computer market, 90+% Windows. People fear change and are afraid to learn. Even in academia.

Later
Josh

Forgetting Legacy Software

[ClarkEvans]

What is often missing in these formulations is the investment in legacy software. This is why Microsoft won and Apple lost in the late 80's. Sure the Mac was better... but it didn't run all of the custom developed DOS software that Windows did. Then in the early 90's it was Windows NT vs OS/2. Although OS/2 had a compatibility layer, it wasn't "Windows". And thus, once again, all of those custom windows applications came to play.

Now we want companies like Ford to adopt linux? It isn't going to happen. They have, I am sure, billions of dollars invested in 16 bit and 32 bit windows software (Yes, there are still many VB 3.0 applications out there.). Until Linux provides proven, reliable, backwards compatibility here it's no dice. The lock-in cost is just too high.

Now. This may be possible in 10 years from now. As long as corporate developers use plain ole HTML plus well-supported Javascript and don't use ActiveX and, worse the new .NET stuff. But how likely is that? Not. And so we go round and round the treadmill. As corporate lock-in grows deeper and deeper -- tough luck Linux.

Re:Ease of use

[Apotsy]

I can type 'tail myfile' alot faster than I can open a file in notepad and scroll to the bottom.

You only think that's true. One of the key discoveries in the science of human-computer interaction was that users frequently perceive easy tasks as being slower than harder ones, even though the reverse is true.

In one study of this phenomenon (Tognazzini, Tog on Interface, 1992.), users were asked to do the same task using the keyboard and the mouse. The keyboard was powerfully engaging, in the manner of many video games, requiring the user to make many small decisions. The mouse version of the task was far less engaging, requiring no decisions and only low-level cognitive engagement.

Each and every user was able to perform the task using the mouse significantly faster, an average of 50% faster.

Interestingly, each and every user reported that they did the task much faster using the keyboard, exactly contrary to the objective evidence of the stopwatch.

Taken from here under the section labelled "Reduce Subjective Time".

All the "power users" who think CLIs are more efficient because it seems like it takes less time would do well to try making some objective speed measurements with a stopwatch. It might come as a surprise that GUIs are actually faster, even though it seems like they are slower.