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Win2k Cheaper than Linux

An anonymous reader writes "According to this story, Win2k costs an average of 11%-22% total cost of enterprise. The study showed that the initial investment takes up less than 5% of the total cost. Linux did beat Win2k in one category, Web-serving." Man did this thing get submitted a lot.

24 of 974 comments (clear)

  1. Well duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    You have to know what you are doing to use Linux.

    Willy Gates has made Windows so easy anybody can use it.

    Profit from ignorance!

    1. Re:Well duh by wojie · · Score: 2, Funny

      And what added dimesion of control is that? Transverse? A car can only go forward of backward, and turn the wheels side to side. I'd hate to own either the car in front or behind you if you believe otherwise.

      Maybe if you're moving fast enough you'd be able to fit into a spot smaller than the car, so fast cars are a definite plus when it comes to parking.

    2. Re:Well duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      School your ass with an automatic transmission?
      Something about this post disturbs me.

    3. Re:Well duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      the real difference is, when linux breaks, it usually needs to be fixed.. when win2k breaks, it's usually just because it needs a reboot.. MCSE's are trained to handle just this situation, they can press a power button like you wouldn't believe.. They are truly gods, mere mortals cannot harness such power..

  2. IN SOVIET RUSSIA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    TCO doesn't matter.

  3. Absolutely True by Apreche · · Score: 5, Funny

    Linux costs me anywhere between 1 hour and 5 hours to download an iso of my favorite distro. Win2k costs me 5 minutes to burn a CD-R and 30 cents to buy the blank disc. Overall I would say that since with a minimum wage job I can make 6 dollars in an hour that win2k is by far the better value.

    --
    The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
    1. Re:Absolutely True by SwampThing · · Score: 5, Funny

      I gotta assume this is a troll. This logic only applies if you do nothing else while your Linux iso downloads, but just sit and watch the progress bar grow.

  4. Of course its cheaper.... by Yoda2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    if you only buy a single copy and then install it on your entire network!

  5. Comment by Aknaton · · Score: 5, Funny

    I love this comment on article on CRN's website:

    "It just sounds strange that this article claims a five years study using Windows 2000. As of today, this study should have began by Dec. 1997 ! That means getting Windows 2000 two years in advance. "

    So they must using a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) to come up with it TCO figures.

  6. + 10 Karma! by NineNine · · Score: 5, Funny

    You get meta-karma, for actually using the word "balance" in the same sentence with a link to the register. I was impressed. If course, it's unbelievably funny, but I was pretty damn impressed at the effort.

    On another front, you can get well-balanced news stories here.

  7. Upgrade Smupgrade. by deathcloset · · Score: 2, Funny

    NT for 5 years now. It's simple. Like owning a dutch wall, with a lot of generous boys to plug the holes. I upgraded to Windows 2000, which is NT 5.0. Whole domain, simple. And everytime some horrindous security hole appears I just visit the pretty blue and orange microsoft.com and there is a little dutch boy waiting to plug a hole in the dike. But don't think for a second I don't have my public on anything less than a Nat/Firewall box. Oh you clever kiddies you..

  8. Propagander at the time of war... by Komarosu · · Score: 2, Funny

    * Wonders if this is another piece of MS propagander * Let the -1 Troll modding commence :)

    --

    "What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
  9. No way! My AMIGA won the best TCO everywhere! by Viewsonic · · Score: 3, Funny

    Eat it Mac'o !

  10. The problem with Linux by Curialis · · Score: 5, Funny

    is that you don't get ANY points for installing it. You get 1 MS Licensing point for each copy of XP, 5 for MS Office and 10 for 2000 Server. No points at all for Linux. How can it be good for your business if you can't get any points! And levels. When you reach certain numbers of points you get new levels.

    I think the new MS licensing agreement was actually a RPG system that fell into the wrong hands.

    For a good headache...

  11. And in the next 4 days by RebelTycoon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Man did this thing get submitted a lot

    We shall see this story again, but with a new title...

    Taking bets now who will post the duplicate...

    1) Hermos,
    2) Michael
    3) Taco
    4) Taco's Wife (pertending to be Taco)

  12. Better Register Story by alistair · · Score: 4, Funny

    In all the discussion about Microsoft TCO, you missed The Register story of the day...

    Woman jump starts car with cyber-infant.

  13. Re:a company i worked for called MS once... by sharkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    MS charged us $150/h to talk to us

    Well, when factoring support into TCO, don forget to include this study.

    --

    --
    "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  14. Yup, Sure Guys by BurritoWarrior · · Score: 5, Funny

    We can see the great benefits of a MS solution firsthand by the performance of your server.

    The site www.crn.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on unknown.

    What is the TCO of replacing that smoldering hunk in the corner, guys?

  15. Maybe they're right! by crivens · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hey maybe they're right!

    To install Linux I need the following:

    - buy a new computer
    - order a Cable net connection to download the CD
    - buy a CD burner to burn the CD

    With Windows I just need to:

    - dial 1-800-555-DELL (free)
    - give credit card details
    - receive delivery of new PC with Windows installed

    So really buying Windows saves me money as I don't need the net connection or the burner!

    Ok ok, so that was bad. But it's only 8:21 and I'm half asleep.

  16. I say it again... by dacarr · · Score: 3, Funny

    83% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

    --
    This sig no verb.
  17. Windows Fileservers with lower TCO than Linux???? by Ektanoor · · Score: 5, Funny

    I saw it in IDG.net. It's pretty funny...

    Well for nearly 11 years I have been in the fileserver world. I touched lots of file servers. From old ancient LANtastic and Netware 2.15, going through most Novell flavours up to 5.0. For 11 years I worked with, administered, tweaked and crunched so many different file servers that I don't remember all of them. Lots of Novell flavours, OS/2, NFS on Solaris and Linux. I worked also with Windows "solutions", from WfW up to Windows2000 Server. From all these I sincerly prefer Netware. Netware is far better and manageable than any other file server system. Naturally as Novell did it specially for file servers. However there is a problem with Novell. Its prices are prohibitive for many customers. But, if your work highly depends in file server services, surely the TCO is far lower than everyone else.

    Among all the systems I used, the most crappy, cumbersome, crash-proned, time consuming and nervestraining was M$ crap. It came up into hanging a whole local network, just because M$ thought it could play at will with TCP/IP stack. But there are tons of stories about the crap. Let's just pick the most recent.

    In April this year, I met a medium-sized Compaq server in one highly important organisation. Compaq's dealer sweeted a lot to have that lovely machine there. And sweeted even more to have it working. The thing worked, naturally, on Windows2000 Server. I was asked to tweak the crap so that several problems were gone. And the problems were: workstations loosing connection with the server, Apps frequently hanging up, file transfer working slowly (in a 100mbits network it looked much like 10mbits), and a episodic events with the machine crashing.

    After some administration we came up to the conclusion that the machine was going into sure doom. The DNS was crashing every day, WINS and SMB were giving wrong packets into the network, the file system was getting wrong data, user accounts were not freed, CPU never lowered behind 30% and lots of many other problems. Besides we found that, everyday, 30 minutes of workday was lost on backing up data (it was a damn important server) as no one could work while backup was going on.

    Well, we created a backup server, curiously on Linux, but with the objective to reinstall Windows2000 on the main server. We lost ONE week trying to do it. As we discovered, the original installer had also huge problems with that machine. The machine was simply unable to work stable with Windows2000.

    Considering the pros and cons I decided to use my old weapon The Penguin Dancing Samba, against the huge oposition of many people. However the situation was Hell in Flames and there should be a fast solution. So the bosses agreed the change.

    Well I had a whole day of headaches to install it on Compaq's RAID. Also I had lots of trouble creating a secure, stable and automatised environment. In the whole, it took me 2-3 weeks to do all the work.

    Today, nearly half-year later, the admin approaches the server 1-2 times in the week. Most work is log checking and some rare tweaks in the configuration (mostly adding users), the machine carries several early warning scripts in case something goes wrong. Backup is completely automatic. With the exception of one single user (some mystic problem), everyone works without hangups, crashes or lost connections. The system lives perfectly in its 100mbps network and the problem of slow connections is forgotten. Besides, the average load of this machine is just 3% and it now carries also a MySQL server that is frequently used and which, in the future, may substitute many file server tasks.

    Is this the the higher TCO they talk about?

  18. WIn2k Bugcheck Reboot Feature Saves Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I like how my work Win2k box reboots itself unexpectedly. It must do that to increase my productivity....saving me valuable time from manually rebooting to clean up. I remember Windows NT Workstation and how I had to go through the annoying procedure of re-booting when explorer would slow to a crawl after working with IE Java based Oracle utilities. SOmetimes hitting the reset button on a blue screen of death. It's great the Win2k no longer does this. It just goes ahead and reboots. Whap!...I am 28.2% more efficient now.

    It is so much more inexpensive and handy than a linux box that doesn't crash and restart. Restarting sometimes three to four times.

    FROM the Event Log:

    The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000050 (0xa127dc34, 0x00000000, 0xbff071cb, 0x00000002). Microsoft Windows 2000 [v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: C:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini120202-01.dmp.

    P.S. Internet Explorer does it too. Crashing and sending a notice to Microsoft.

    Technology...is sooo sexy!

  19. dangerous stories by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Funny

    if you liked the story "Win2k Cheaper than Linux" as posted on slashdot.org, then you'll just love these companion stories!:

    "Animal Protein Healthier than Vegetable Protein" as posted on vegetarians.net

    "Peaceful Dialog Goes Farther than Violent Conflict" as posted on alqaeda.gov

    "Censorship Attempts Actually Lead to Greater Mass Appeal of Target Sites" as posted on scientology.org

    "My Uncle was an Monkey" as posted on creationism.com

    don't delay! visit now!

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  20. The IDC study was sponsored by Microsoft by induhvidual · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft paid good money for that study. If you take it seriously, that just proves your last remaining brain cell has died. The more you dig for details the more ridiculous their claims are. If you want the truth, read the article on the register, and check out the IBM study a this link... http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/RFG-LinuxTCO-vFINAL-Jul 2002.pdf