Take for instance my school. We have, for trials, migrated 2 workstations over from NT4 to WinXP in our CISCO lab. It comes with.NET Messenger (MSN Messenger), we cannot work out any way to remove this, and every day, we find some shmuck trying to use it. Why is it that we are unable to remove it? Is it a crucial part of the NT5 kernel??? Would XP cease to work without it??? NO! It is just bloat and pointless waste of space, and time.
well in our network, we have disabled windows messenger of the workstations. and we are able to fully control all computer systems restricting one's access to certain apps and avoiding messing up with the computer. everything is done without installing any 3rd party software. just the policy settings.
and if you think that having all of those software takes up harddrive space. i bet your collection of mp3 and other files is 100000x more than a simple 4MB installation file. with the 160gb hdd on the horizon and a hdd with the smallest 20gb in the market, what do you do with all the space (other than storing those mp3 files in it?)
I agree with you when you say: It is like Ford saying "Here's your new car, it comes with tires, but if you want another brand of tires, you still have to keep these four tires in your car otherwise it wont work..."
however, have you ever thought that you bought a car without any parts in it. meaning because you can "rebrand a car" this means that I can sell one without tires (and you will be the one to choose) or i sell you without any parts like the fuel injection, spark plugs, radiator (because you can all purchase these things from other small shops and assemble them!) You haven't seen a car sold in a bare configuration, have you?
but the big question there is, will ford be liable if something happens (an accident) because you fitted the wrong part (because you customized it)?
i also do not get why all people are bashing windows. i mean you have the choice to use it or not. if you do not want, then don't (as most of you are doing.) it is not that microsoft is forcing everyone to use windows (because if it is, then all you guys reading this have a windows workstation).
as a consumer in part, i paid roughly $80 for an original windows xp home in our country (i really do not get where you get all the price figures). and i am happy to get windows messenger, ie, windows media player, etc all built-in. imaging if i were to pay the same amount just to get the os (and your start menu will not have any programs menu but control panel.)
i would also argue in linux, i think if you are to do the same thing, most companies should not include any add-ons installed. so the distribution copy should be the kernel and it alone.
don't mind if you mod me down. i just wonder why people contradict themselves often (and sometimes i do that too.)
We have encountered this situation and studied it well. We ended it with the regular client server based.
Since you are using Windows platform, it will cost you to do thin client services rather than the traditional client server based.
First, getting a terminal license from Microsoft costs around an OEM copy of Windows XP. Second, if you are going to you Citrix, the licensing costs are also high for it. So you are already costing more for the terminal server.
Third, for hardware, you will support around 40-50 users / server with a typical Dual P3-1.2GHZ with around 6GB RAM! The server itself will cost you a lot since you will really need to get a fat one to serve lots of users. More costs to the deployment of a thin client system. Besides, you will put memory in the thin client, motherboard, cpu but you *do not utilitize* them. Such a waste of hardware resources.
Since I think you are having problems with management, I suggest that you enforce group policy in Windows NT/2000 systems. This will at least ease administration as what I am doing right now with more than 100 computers and growing. I almost do not maintain the client computers at all since I practically restrict everything except for their intended applications to be used by the user.
i believe that there is more problem in performance rather than capacity.
a typical configuration that cheap will use an ide hdd (and to make it cheaper software raid).
the main problem (for us in this case) is the performance. how do you increase the data transfer? for the past few years, the storage space has increased tremendously but the transfer rate of the drives are out of proportion with the space.
ide is usually placed in a 33mhz/32bit bus which will give a burst transfer of 133mbyte/sec. that is the max whatever you do. but if you will place a nic card, they will share the bandwidth unless it is placed in a different bus.
for the interface itself, scsi can handle more i/o operations/sec and fc even more. technologies today can implement raid5 at almost no performance hit.
so given 1tb of data, definite many people will be accessing it (unless you really plan to use it for your insane storage space). so if people will be able to store much, they can access it at a much slower rate.
so you won't see the scsi and fc being obsolute even though the serial ata gets through. it will remain in the low end segment of the storage market.
and besides, if you want to backup your data, the best way is to store it to tape and that will cost big (since mirroring the info in another server will not give you the reliability compared to tape)
most of the sites that i have seen benchmark the two processors head to head using generic applications.
however, intel does not concentrate on applications that do not require more cpu power like office apps. who cares if i run office app with benchmarks slightly slower? as if when i type i eat up the cpu. i mean i bet it will be idle 99% (and one percent for other system processes)
intel is now concentrating on multimedia (which shows their lead over amd most of the time.) the good thing about intel is that they are concentrating on new technologies such as the sse2 and hyperthreading.
on the sse2 side, the performance of the pentium 4 2.2ghz beats athlon by as much as 64% in specially programmed applications like lightwave 7. and more than that if you enable hyperthreading, you can get a rough gain of 30% on certain applications including server apps. so if your program has been properly programed and compiled you can have gains of around 100% over the fastest amd.
and here is the catch. when you buy a pentium 4 2.2ghz, most people will overclock it to 3ghz. so that is worth the high price. and amd won't be having any athlon xp 3000+ soon.
intel has very good fabrication technology in microchips (not just processors.) they have upgraded their fab plants to 0.13 micron and 300mm wafer. so actually the hefty price of intel cpu gains them more profit than amd (and in the latest financial results, intel has earned $1.8b compared to amd loss of $61m. intel's gains would be bigger if not for their network and wireless division's loss)
intel has many cards to show. i mean a processor having roughly 55m transistors in it (around 4.5 times more than amd) what are they all doing in there?
just wait and see. intel will slowly activate more features in pentium 4 that are already built in to it or things that in can handle. like release a pentium 4 with 133fsb (over the current 100mhz) will surely make it fly.
by the way, i will report to you guys after we get our engineering sample of pentium 4 (without any multiplier locks!!!!!) let's see how fast the pentium 4 is over amd. note than pentium 4 scales very well.
i do not believe in benchmarks. they are not fair and inaccurate. systems being compared are not in equal specifications.
my other point is when you are using a celeron or a duron, do you feel any speed difference in using word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, e-mail, surfing? when running games, can you notice a 100fps from 95fps?
i am sure most will buy the faster cpu but there is not much difference with all the cpu unless you have specialized applications such as encoding, graphics rendering, and other professional applications.
so for a home user, a celeron 500 may do very well than a celeron 1.2ghz or a duron. just count the times the actual usage of your cpu, most of the time, it is idle.
getting a faster cpu nowadays is just because you need it and not that you want it. a celeron 300 system can do most basic functions such as doing word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, internet.
the only reason you would need to get a p4 2.2ghz is that if you will be rendering 3d images (and look at now lightwave 7 exploits p4 and beats the heck out of athlon), doing more multimedia work (which is the main thrust of intel), and games (yes this is most probably the 99% reason why more cpu/gpu is needed). other than that, it will be totally useless.
but i'm impressed with the performance (and engineering) of the pentium 4. you can now render through divx at realtime a dvd movie with audio. and if you can engineer a software to use sse2 and all the pipelines of p4, look at the performance gain of lightwave (which was totally reengineered from the start.) so i bet most applications use only less than 30% of the cpu at any given time. i bet if they would reprogram their work and use 100% better, it will be running all your system something like pentium 4 4ghz!
btw, a few days ago, i was running a celeron 300a cpu and it worked great for me (until i had to replace the worn out motherboard so i upgraded to p3 733 - not even a p4.)
i am running numerous windows 2k servers around and the only time i had to reboot them is when the power went out for a long period (when we switched power substation), hardware failure, and patches. otherwise, it did 100% well.
most of the problems with regard to the desktop can be attributed to the user, hardware, and 3rd party software.
if you really put all the good stuff in a computer with proper integration and validation, it will run fine whether it is windows, linux, etc. the same thing holds true if your system sucks.
if a user is very smart enough to install programs that have certain software/hardware requirements, runs all applications at once (although this can be done in windows nt/2k/xp), drags files and folder to whatever place they see, changes this and that settings, the possibility of crashing is high
most of the crashes (from my experience) come from 3rd party application and not windows itself. some sensitive programs like adobe premiere, photoshop (if you really load a very big image), some plugins in the browser, mixup each other settings and file versions causing your computer to crash.
the bluescreen of death you will see most of the time can be repeated and the cause is from file corruption, hardware, and the software you are running.
well i should say that i've been running winxp since december and i didn't have any crashes yet.
last but not the least (though not directly connected with the topic), the latest version of windows use the latest advancement in cpu, graphics, memory, sound, etc. so it may be that the linux cannot handle all the new stuff is that it is not needed by the people using it.
so i will say that most problems are caused by other factors and not windows itself. i am willing to build you a windows system that will have a 99.9999% availability.
let's first look at where everything start, in the studios of television stations.
at current, the technology that most are using are dvpro, digitelbetacam, and d1(but mostly for mastering). when you are going to get to use hdtv, you will have to change:
1. cameras - if you are going to use >720i or 720p and above since NTSC uses 720i
2. tapes - since you will need to store more information and you will need a bigger tape to store 1 hr of video
3. editing stations - you will have to replace all those avid systems to support hdtv and you will really need lots of storage space to store those video
4. transmission equipment - you will need a different equipment to process and transmit digital high resolution signals and multichannel audio
if one is missing, it is useless to go hdtv since a low quality and/or analog signal will just ruin your output. it will be very costly to replace everything at the same time. just go to sony website and look at their professional hdtv equipment. although there may be some who are running 100% on hdtv and just converting it back to analog, majority i believe is not 100% hdtv ready.
i believe that hdtv right now is just converted to hdtv from standard ntsc signals. so you will not see any difference except since the pixels are much smaller so it is clearer but in terms of resolution and other aspects, there are no changes.
we went to the mall after celebrating with my family and...
i saw a very good pair of shoes from rockport but i don't have any size:(
i saw a lavander sweatshirt from dockers and the only one left has a stain in it:(
my family went to this resto because i am craving for a food. we went there but it was unavailable:( but at least the food was good and it was our first time there:)
in the future, the Internet will not be accessed by computers, it will from mobile users whether it may be from mobile phones, wireless pda, watches, and other gadgets.
so if everybody uses their 3g phones to access information and majority of the mobile phone users are chinese, then indeed chinese can outbeat english in internet use in less than 10 years.
let say that 4m people are added every month in 10 years, 4m x 12months x 10 years = 480m. the current population of the us is only around 286m according to US census. although the us population will grow, the us mobile phone usage is around 50% so after 10 years, the mobile users of china will definitely be more than internet and mobile users.
and if you say that most of there population is at the country side, i will say it is correct. but the number of people living in the urban areas also reache hundreds of millions. a small province in china has population more than most countries in the world.
we are giving literacy programs to faculty/staff to beef up their knowledge in computer apps. majority of the them have 0 IQ in computers and it is actually difficult for us to even pursuade them to use computers for their own benefit. i am not sure if teaching them linux at start may have a good or bad reaction based on userability of it. we may have lots of time giving our support to do small functions compared to windows where it is point and click.
is there any real math that really says that using linux will indeed save you? meaning if you have 2000 faculty/staff to train all of them to linux and then providing support compared to train all of them to windows then buying software then providing support? **assume these people do not know anything about computers and all computers will be brand new so do not include the savings from not upgrading**
is there any study made how a user will be able to absorb concepts and functionality of linux with windows? this will more or less determine the support and training costs.
we are buying microsoft products here and there are numerous ways of licensing available. it is just finding the right combination in order for you to save money. there are certain options which we can get around 50% of the academic license price (this is legal.)
microsoft is less than half of the story. we buy more expensive programs like avid express, adobe photoshop, premiere, illustrator, pagemaker/indesign, macromedia flash, director, dreamweaver, authorware, autodesk autocad, 3dstudiomax, retas pro, and other engineering/graphics design software. is there any opensource alternative to all of these? i think windows is cheap compared to the others. office will be used in the office and it will not be that much compared to the ones used in the classrooms.
we are also doing some outsourcing of certain programs and we are looking at companies some with background in opensource and linux. even though the software may be free, the development is not and i think it is almost comparable to the development in visual basic (where it is rather easy to create programs.)
As of Dec. 20, 2001, the total number of published security bulletins is only 58 compared to 100 in 2000 and 60 in 1999. This year, there are 4 cumulative patches so the actual number of published security threats is around 54.
The last 3 security vulnerabilities for XP relate to IE, Windows Media, and USB plug and play feature.
I should say that the products of Microsoft are just becoming mature right now. It is unfair for Linux and Unix since they I believe they have been ages before Microsoft introduced Windows. So it terms of maturity, Linux took years just as Microsoft is.
Like in service packs, the Windows 3.51 had around 13 (or more if I remember correctly.) Windows NT4.0 had 6 (the 7th was not released officially.) Windows 2000 now has 2 (and they are releasing SP3 Q1 2002.) There is WindowsXP although there is no SP around (I believe it may be in the alpha stages.) The number of service packs that is released actually decreases due to the maturity of their products. And most people even some *nix guys say that WindowsXP is actually more stable than ever.
It is also noteworthy to say that the base OS of Windows is getting more secure. It is just the apps integrated with the Internet that have most of the security threats like IE, Outlook, Office. For the servers in W2K, the services are the ones problematic and the user has the freedom to deactivate some and use an alternative. Like in Linux, the same thing applies where a server may use the services from different publishers.
I am not saying that Microsoft is good or anything but I say that comparing Windows (PRO/HOME) and Linux/Unix is like comparing apples and oranges. They are built for different purpose thus designed differently.
In the server arena, I think that it is only in Windows 2000 that they released their 1st server OS and not in Windows NT 4.0. Their Windows.NET server hopefully will do better than W2K servers.
Well actually Mr. Howard Schmidt has a point there.
I say that Linux and Windows cannot be directly compared (IMHO) because of their functions and objectives. But nevertheless, in terms of functionality, Linux is not very user friendly (you have to do lots of steps) in order to reduce the faults in the system (whether security or stability.) Microsoft on the other hand wants every user will be able to use a PC even though it is their first time to use one. In the process of doing that, if you disable all features (because of security) then nobody will buy their OS since I believe their support call center will be full 100% of the time.
it's like this, if you shout fire in a movie theater full of people, most will panic and there will be injuries and maybe deaths from being trampled upon by people.
if you do not shout fire, people may get trapped and die to.
so it is really difficult to choose which is right.
we are designing some small datacenters for companies. of course your costs should be kept at a minimum.
1. you do not need to pay any airconditioning anymore (unless you have enough money to run it 24/7/365.)
2. if you are going to place your rack in a small room, make sure that air will come from the bottom front of the rack (air pushing upwards vertically). this will allow for proper colling of racked equipment.
3. vent the heat at the upper rear where all the heat dissipates.
4. for servers, use low power like the tualatin series (700mhz with 1v i think). i suggest that you do not use AMD since they are very hot.
5. for network equipment, they do not generate much heat unless you get the gigabit routing switches with lots of cpu inside.
6. and seriously, when you say that a server/network equipment is high end, they are tested for conditions to work in case there are fan failures and no cooling, etc...
hope this helps you.
here are some tips for structured cabling...
on
Wiring A New House?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
i am doing some structured cabling for a campus environment and i would like to share to you some tips that i have learned.
1. use the highest grade of cable available. use cat6 (even though the standard has not yet been established.) we did a testing and the best cable came from nordx/cdt using their cat6 4800lx cables.
2. do not put any telephone wire (cat3) cables. cat 5 is backward compatible to cat 4,3,2,1 and of course cat 6 will be for 5,4,3,2,1. but the cat3 cable is not forward compatible to cat6. you can crimp the rj45 on a pair of cat3.
3. treat the outlet to each room as more of utility. therefore, you should place it as much as you can across the room just like electrical outlets. besides, this is what structured cabling is all about.
4. i do not suggest that you use stp, this is because you will need to ground each end of the cable or else it will absorb all the interference. stp is used for industrial applications where there are motors, and other interference causing devices. what you do is get a good grade of shielding in the conduit instead.
5. assign a small room or cabinet in your house that you can centrally terminate the cables with connections to your switches, telco company, cable company, etc.
6. with regard to safety, use a fire proof coating in the cables but not necessarily plenum. plenum emits toxic substances when burned although it will take extra effort to burn it.
7. use patch cables. buy the factory made patch cables to terminate to a device at both ends instead of crimping it. it provides the lowest in terms of signal loss.
8. remember get a certification (these are offered by good manufacturers.) at least you can avail of warranty of parts and labor if anything goes wrong.
below is just my thoughts in helping you decide in using fiber or copper.
with regards to fiber, imho, in 10 years time, copper will be obsolete. fiber to the desktop will be as common as cat 5 installations. copper is reaching its limits. the proposed cat7 cable requires shielding in each copper pair and a shielding for the entire cable. the head will no longer be rj45. it will definitely be more expensive than buying fiber optic cables.
when using fiber optic, since your installation is in a house, you can use the multimode fiber optic cable. you can get the 62.5/125 or 50/125 core. distance is more of the decision what type to get. it depends on the equipment you get (see the specs.) remember that fiber optic should come in pairs. for connection heads, the most common is sc. almost all gigabit uses that with exception to some who use mt-rj.
imho, i think that nowadays, it is actually cheaper to create fiber optic cables than copper cables because fiber optic is made up of glass and is then made up of sand whereas copper is made from copper and you can actually melt the wires and sell the copper from it than fiber optic. manufacturers are just selling fiber optic for a higher price since it is in high demand in commercial applications (more $$$$.)
i should say that you may not need all of those information since you are not doing any commercial installation but i believe that when you do something, you must do it good! (besides it should last for 25 years or more.)
years years ago, i was using windows and yes i heard about many wonderful things about linux. so i tried installing linux in my computer. of course, i was a clueless user at that time without anyone to guide me. but i proceeded with it (i think it was still windows 95 and NT 4 at that time.) so it ended up into frustration, i was able to install it but i couldn't get things to work. and now i am using microsoft windows 2000, by bad experience with linux (redhat actually,) prevent me from supporting it even though i know it was good. maybe good for those nerds.
at least now i am enjoying those active directory thing and the.net platform. we are developing software that will integrate many applications into one portal. and we plan to do it in around 6 months time.
amd's 64bit hammer CPU and intel's itanium targets the server market where all the $$$ are.
for a server the main concern is: reliability, redundancy, and scalability
performance is just secondary.
for the intel itanium, intel has made very good profusion chipsets that will give very high I/O (PCI-X with lots of channels) and memory bandwidth (quad interleaved with chipkill) that will feed the fast CPU. just as serverworks is right now, we buy those expensive systems because we need the reliability and bandwidth. although serverworks is a 3rd party company (and intel tried to buy it from broadcom but to no avail,) it has a somewhat allegiance to the intel platform. they also make the best chipsets for pentium iii, pentium iii-s, pentium iii xeon CPUS. intel also designs very very very good motherboards and chipsets. like their new releases for the tualatin CPU, when you see the design and placements, it is far off from the asus, gigabyte, msi, etc... intel also creates server CPU that can handle big L2/L3 on-die caches running at core speed. they are also able to scale their processor to 9632 (have you seen any amd processors used in supercomputers not clusters such as beowulf?)
for amd, they may have a good cpu (better performance) but the problem is who manufactures the board and chipsets? for boards, they will most likely rely on asus, gigabyte, msi, etc... but i will not trust my money on them since they do not have features such as management, high i/o, and expertise in creating server boards. moreover, the chipset right now for the dual athlon is supposed to be amd but it flops big time. so motherboard manufacturers use the via chipset. you do not get all the performance (I/O, PCI) and reliability. so since this is the current situation for their workstation, what more for server?
so if amd wins the war with intel in the CPU arena, amd needs lots of resources to develop very good platform for servers (motherboard, chipset, memory controllers, compilers) before they can penetrate the real server market.
lastly, marketing is very important. if do-it-yourself servers are just the target of amd, they will not penetrate the real server market compared to intel, which is backed up by companies such as unisys, ibm, dell, sgi, hp, compaq, microsoft, and linux?.
i will say it is like intel offers end-to-end solutions for server platforms compared to amd that does only cpu and relies on partners to support their cpu.
we are able to run windows 2000 advanced servers with reliability like lasting for months without reboots. (of course our reboots only come from patches and power failes due to the recent transfer of power substation in our area.)
we are able to integrate authentication and policy. this prevents students from messing up the workstations (windows 2000 pro.) because of this, our windows 2000 workstations are almost maintenance free, running for the entire semester without a need to reinstall. students are not even able to see the harddrives and can only run certain programs. they cannot download files and run them. the best of all, they cannot delete files of other people.
i will honestly say that windows now is stable than before. of course, we are very diligent in applying patches, service packs, etc...
with regards to the price (i do not live in the US), that same amount can give us the following benefits:
500 workstations w/ windows 2000 and office 2000.
around 14 servers running us 2 quad xeon (700MHz w/ 1MB L2 and 4GB RAM) for sql 2000, 12 dual tualatin (like 1.26GHz with 2GB RAM @) for exchange, iis, etc. of course everything has a licensed software for that number of computers. by the way, all our servers are paired for redundancy.
we are also able to include 2.4TB worth of storage with a tape library (ultrium.) everything is running in a SAN environment.
that includes symmetra 16KVA ups and gigabit switches.
all of that for a recent quotation and we are finalizing our purchase plan. i think it is even much cheaper compared to the article.
in my belief, there are ups and downs for using windows 2000 and *nix systems. i am not saying that *nix sucks or anything but we are able to accomplish things what *nix does. it just needs the proper knowhow to manage windows 2000 without experiencing crashes. i sometimes joke that windows 2000 sys admins are much better since they have to keep up with weak security settings, nonstop security patches, software bugs, etc. unlike for *nix, it is by default secure, and you can leave it in the corner of the room and forget about it. but of course i still praise *nix people. my inspiration in running microsoft products come from you guys who constantly criticize microsoft.
and lastly, we use microsoft systems because of support options, software are easier to develop and deploy, and the price is much cheaper than using competitive softwares other than linux.
my last part is rather out of topic but i would like to ask if there is any initiative in the *nix world to do.net. integrate all php, perl, python, cgi, etc... into one system and have a very scalable database?
is there any policy capable *nix systems to create a domain of computers with homogeneous security permissions, settings, preferences?
:-)
i was surprised, i thought/. people are too biased against microsoft.
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Take for instance my school. We have, for trials, migrated 2 workstations over from NT4 to WinXP in our CISCO lab. It comes with .NET Messenger (MSN Messenger), we cannot work out any way to remove this, and every day, we find some shmuck trying to use it. Why is it that we are unable to remove it? Is it a crucial part of the NT5 kernel??? Would XP cease to work without it??? NO! It is just bloat and pointless waste of space, and time.
well in our network, we have disabled windows messenger of the workstations. and we are able to fully control all computer systems restricting one's access to certain apps and avoiding messing up with the computer. everything is done without installing any 3rd party software. just the policy settings.
and if you think that having all of those software takes up harddrive space. i bet your collection of mp3 and other files is 100000x more than a simple 4MB installation file. with the 160gb hdd on the horizon and a hdd with the smallest 20gb in the market, what do you do with all the space (other than storing those mp3 files in it?)
I agree with you when you say:
It is like Ford saying "Here's your new car, it comes with tires, but if you want another brand of tires, you still have to keep these four tires in your car otherwise it wont work..."
however, have you ever thought that you bought a car without any parts in it. meaning because you can "rebrand a car" this means that I can sell one without tires (and you will be the one to choose) or i sell you without any parts like the fuel injection, spark plugs, radiator (because you can all purchase these things from other small shops and assemble them!) You haven't seen a car sold in a bare configuration, have you?
but the big question there is, will ford be liable if something happens (an accident) because you fitted the wrong part (because you customized it)?
i also do not get why all people are bashing windows. i mean you have the choice to use it or not. if you do not want, then don't (as most of you are doing.) it is not that microsoft is forcing everyone to use windows (because if it is, then all you guys reading this have a windows workstation).
as a consumer in part, i paid roughly $80 for an original windows xp home in our country (i really do not get where you get all the price figures). and i am happy to get windows messenger, ie, windows media player, etc all built-in. imaging if i were to pay the same amount just to get the os (and your start menu will not have any programs menu but control panel.)
i would also argue in linux, i think if you are to do the same thing, most companies should not include any add-ons installed. so the distribution copy should be the kernel and it alone.
don't mind if you mod me down. i just wonder why people contradict themselves often (and sometimes i do that too.)
:)
We have encountered this situation and studied it well. We ended it with the regular client server based.
Since you are using Windows platform, it will cost you to do thin client services rather than the traditional client server based.
First, getting a terminal license from Microsoft costs around an OEM copy of Windows XP. Second, if you are going to you Citrix, the licensing costs are also high for it. So you are already costing more for the terminal server.
Third, for hardware, you will support around 40-50 users / server with a typical Dual P3-1.2GHZ with around 6GB RAM! The server itself will cost you a lot since you will really need to get a fat one to serve lots of users. More costs to the deployment of a thin client system. Besides, you will put memory in the thin client, motherboard, cpu but you *do not utilitize* them. Such a waste of hardware resources.
Since I think you are having problems with management, I suggest that you enforce group policy in Windows NT/2000 systems. This will at least ease administration as what I am doing right now with more than 100 computers and growing. I almost do not maintain the client computers at all since I practically restrict everything except for their intended applications to be used by the user.
Chow!
i believe that there is more problem in performance rather than capacity.
a typical configuration that cheap will use an ide hdd (and to make it cheaper software raid).
the main problem (for us in this case) is the performance. how do you increase the data transfer? for the past few years, the storage space has increased tremendously but the transfer rate of the drives are out of proportion with the space.
ide is usually placed in a 33mhz/32bit bus which will give a burst transfer of 133mbyte/sec. that is the max whatever you do. but if you will place a nic card, they will share the bandwidth unless it is placed in a different bus.
for the interface itself, scsi can handle more i/o operations/sec and fc even more. technologies today can implement raid5 at almost no performance hit.
so given 1tb of data, definite many people will be accessing it (unless you really plan to use it for your insane storage space). so if people will be able to store much, they can access it at a much slower rate.
so you won't see the scsi and fc being obsolute even though the serial ata gets through. it will remain in the low end segment of the storage market.
and besides, if you want to backup your data, the best way is to store it to tape and that will cost big (since mirroring the info in another server will not give you the reliability compared to tape)
i just would like to give a brief infor about what we are doing with the information development fee (or technology fee in your case):
1. we are placing a computer in each classroom with internet access, lcd projector, vcd,vhs players
2. we are offering free training to faculty for applications of microsoft, adobe, and macromedia.
3. we are using it to get a bandwidth ratio of 2mbits/150 computers
we plan to increase the fee so we can do the additional stuff:
1. create an online video/audio archive that will store self-produced materials and purchased documentaries
2. create an online database of published journals by the students and teachers
3. create an archiving system to digitize all records (books, grades, etc.) that are 1985 and earlier (we have lots of those)
4. create a student portal where they can see their grades, arrange schedules, message boards, e-mail system, etc.
5. purchase more computers to be placed throughout the library
i hope this will help you. i am very happy that this article has been posted. it is similar to what we have been doing for the past 2 years.
most of the sites that i have seen benchmark the two processors head to head using generic applications.
however, intel does not concentrate on applications that do not require more cpu power like office apps. who cares if i run office app with benchmarks slightly slower? as if when i type i eat up the cpu. i mean i bet it will be idle 99% (and one percent for other system processes)
intel is now concentrating on multimedia (which shows their lead over amd most of the time.) the good thing about intel is that they are concentrating on new technologies such as the sse2 and hyperthreading.
on the sse2 side, the performance of the pentium 4 2.2ghz beats athlon by as much as 64% in specially programmed applications like lightwave 7. and more than that if you enable hyperthreading, you can get a rough gain of 30% on certain applications including server apps. so if your program has been properly programed and compiled you can have gains of around 100% over the fastest amd.
and here is the catch. when you buy a pentium 4 2.2ghz, most people will overclock it to 3ghz. so that is worth the high price. and amd won't be having any athlon xp 3000+ soon.
intel has very good fabrication technology in microchips (not just processors.) they have upgraded their fab plants to 0.13 micron and 300mm wafer. so actually the hefty price of intel cpu gains them more profit than amd (and in the latest financial results, intel has earned $1.8b compared to amd loss of $61m. intel's gains would be bigger if not for their network and wireless division's loss)
intel has many cards to show. i mean a processor having roughly 55m transistors in it (around 4.5 times more than amd) what are they all doing in there?
just wait and see. intel will slowly activate more features in pentium 4 that are already built in to it or things that in can handle. like release a pentium 4 with 133fsb (over the current 100mhz) will surely make it fly.
by the way, i will report to you guys after we get our engineering sample of pentium 4 (without any multiplier locks!!!!!) let's see how fast the pentium 4 is over amd. note than pentium 4 scales very well.
southern cross cables which lighted their fiber a year ago? (it was /.d)
i mean all of their gigabits (160x2 i believe) are gone to waste?
i do not believe in benchmarks. they are not fair and inaccurate. systems being compared are not in equal specifications.
my other point is when you are using a celeron or a duron, do you feel any speed difference in using word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, e-mail, surfing? when running games, can you notice a 100fps from 95fps?
i am sure most will buy the faster cpu but there is not much difference with all the cpu unless you have specialized applications such as encoding, graphics rendering, and other professional applications.
so for a home user, a celeron 500 may do very well than a celeron 1.2ghz or a duron. just count the times the actual usage of your cpu, most of the time, it is idle.
many question the need for 2.2ghz. i do.
getting a faster cpu nowadays is just because you need it and not that you want it. a celeron 300 system can do most basic functions such as doing word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, internet.
the only reason you would need to get a p4 2.2ghz is that if you will be rendering 3d images (and look at now lightwave 7 exploits p4 and beats the heck out of athlon), doing more multimedia work (which is the main thrust of intel), and games (yes this is most probably the 99% reason why more cpu/gpu is needed). other than that, it will be totally useless.
but i'm impressed with the performance (and engineering) of the pentium 4. you can now render through divx at realtime a dvd movie with audio. and if you can engineer a software to use sse2 and all the pipelines of p4, look at the performance gain of lightwave (which was totally reengineered from the start.) so i bet most applications use only less than 30% of the cpu at any given time. i bet if they would reprogram their work and use 100% better, it will be running all your system something like pentium 4 4ghz!
btw, a few days ago, i was running a celeron 300a cpu and it worked great for me (until i had to replace the worn out motherboard so i upgraded to p3 733 - not even a p4.)
i am running numerous windows 2k servers around and the only time i had to reboot them is when the power went out for a long period (when we switched power substation), hardware failure, and patches. otherwise, it did 100% well.
most of the problems with regard to the desktop can be attributed to the user, hardware, and 3rd party software.
if you really put all the good stuff in a computer with proper integration and validation, it will run fine whether it is windows, linux, etc. the same thing holds true if your system sucks.
if a user is very smart enough to install programs that have certain software/hardware requirements, runs all applications at once (although this can be done in windows nt/2k/xp), drags files and folder to whatever place they see, changes this and that settings, the possibility of crashing is high
most of the crashes (from my experience) come from 3rd party application and not windows itself. some sensitive programs like adobe premiere, photoshop (if you really load a very big image), some plugins in the browser, mixup each other settings and file versions causing your computer to crash.
the bluescreen of death you will see most of the time can be repeated and the cause is from file corruption, hardware, and the software you are running.
well i should say that i've been running winxp since december and i didn't have any crashes yet.
last but not the least (though not directly connected with the topic), the latest version of windows use the latest advancement in cpu, graphics, memory, sound, etc. so it may be that the linux cannot handle all the new stuff is that it is not needed by the people using it.
so i will say that most problems are caused by other factors and not windows itself. i am willing to build you a windows system that will have a 99.9999% availability.
why?
let's first look at where everything start, in the studios of television stations.
at current, the technology that most are using are dvpro, digitelbetacam, and d1(but mostly for mastering). when you are going to get to use hdtv, you will have to change:
1. cameras - if you are going to use >720i or 720p and above since NTSC uses 720i
2. tapes - since you will need to store more information and you will need a bigger tape to store 1 hr of video
3. editing stations - you will have to replace all those avid systems to support hdtv and you will really need lots of storage space to store those video
4. transmission equipment - you will need a different equipment to process and transmit digital high resolution signals and multichannel audio
if one is missing, it is useless to go hdtv since a low quality and/or analog signal will just ruin your output. it will be very costly to replace everything at the same time. just go to sony website and look at their professional hdtv equipment. although there may be some who are running 100% on hdtv and just converting it back to analog, majority i believe is not 100% hdtv ready.
i believe that hdtv right now is just converted to hdtv from standard ntsc signals. so you will not see any difference except since the pixels are much smaller so it is clearer but in terms of resolution and other aspects, there are no changes.
we went to the mall after celebrating with my family and...
:(
:(
:( but at least the food was good and it was our first time there :)
i saw a very good pair of shoes from rockport but i don't have any size
i saw a lavander sweatshirt from dockers and the only one left has a stain in it
my family went to this resto because i am craving for a food. we went there but it was unavailable
oh well...
what a day
merry christmas to all of you.
have a happy new year.
(well at least i had lots of good gifts)
in the future, the Internet will not be accessed by computers, it will from mobile users whether it may be from mobile phones, wireless pda, watches, and other gadgets.
in an article from CNN China cell-phone use hits 140 million there are 140m cellphone users beating US with 118m.
so if everybody uses their 3g phones to access information and majority of the mobile phone users are chinese, then indeed chinese can outbeat english in internet use in less than 10 years.
let say that 4m people are added every month in 10 years, 4m x 12months x 10 years = 480m. the current population of the us is only around 286m according to US census. although the us population will grow, the us mobile phone usage is around 50% so after 10 years, the mobile users of china will definitely be more than internet and mobile users.
and if you say that most of there population is at the country side, i will say it is correct. but the number of people living in the urban areas also reache hundreds of millions. a small province in china has population more than most countries in the world.
my scenario is from a university.
we are giving literacy programs to faculty/staff to beef up their knowledge in computer apps. majority of the them have 0 IQ in computers and it is actually difficult for us to even pursuade them to use computers for their own benefit. i am not sure if teaching them linux at start may have a good or bad reaction based on userability of it. we may have lots of time giving our support to do small functions compared to windows where it is point and click.
is there any real math that really says that using linux will indeed save you? meaning if you have 2000 faculty/staff to train all of them to linux and then providing support compared to train all of them to windows then buying software then providing support? **assume these people do not know anything about computers and all computers will be brand new so do not include the savings from not upgrading**
is there any study made how a user will be able to absorb concepts and functionality of linux with windows? this will more or less determine the support and training costs.
we are buying microsoft products here and there are numerous ways of licensing available. it is just finding the right combination in order for you to save money. there are certain options which we can get around 50% of the academic license price (this is legal.)
microsoft is less than half of the story. we buy more expensive programs like avid express, adobe photoshop, premiere, illustrator, pagemaker/indesign, macromedia flash, director, dreamweaver, authorware, autodesk autocad, 3dstudiomax, retas pro, and other engineering/graphics design software. is there any opensource alternative to all of these? i think windows is cheap compared to the others. office will be used in the office and it will not be that much compared to the ones used in the classrooms.
we are also doing some outsourcing of certain programs and we are looking at companies some with background in opensource and linux. even though the software may be free, the development is not and i think it is almost comparable to the development in visual basic (where it is rather easy to create programs.)
your feedback will greatly be appreciated.
As of Dec. 20, 2001, the total number of published security bulletins is only 58 compared to 100 in 2000 and 60 in 1999. This year, there are 4 cumulative patches so the actual number of published security threats is around 54.
.NET server hopefully will do better than W2K servers.
The last 3 security vulnerabilities for XP relate to IE, Windows Media, and USB plug and play feature.
I should say that the products of Microsoft are just becoming mature right now. It is unfair for Linux and Unix since they I believe they have been ages before Microsoft introduced Windows. So it terms of maturity, Linux took years just as Microsoft is.
Like in service packs, the Windows 3.51 had around 13 (or more if I remember correctly.) Windows NT4.0 had 6 (the 7th was not released officially.) Windows 2000 now has 2 (and they are releasing SP3 Q1 2002.) There is WindowsXP although there is no SP around (I believe it may be in the alpha stages.) The number of service packs that is released actually decreases due to the maturity of their products. And most people even some *nix guys say that WindowsXP is actually more stable than ever.
It is also noteworthy to say that the base OS of Windows is getting more secure. It is just the apps integrated with the Internet that have most of the security threats like IE, Outlook, Office. For the servers in W2K, the services are the ones problematic and the user has the freedom to deactivate some and use an alternative. Like in Linux, the same thing applies where a server may use the services from different publishers.
I am not saying that Microsoft is good or anything but I say that comparing Windows (PRO/HOME) and Linux/Unix is like comparing apples and oranges. They are built for different purpose thus designed differently.
In the server arena, I think that it is only in Windows 2000 that they released their 1st server OS and not in Windows NT 4.0. Their Windows
Well actually Mr. Howard Schmidt has a point there.
I say that Linux and Windows cannot be directly compared (IMHO) because of their functions and objectives. But nevertheless, in terms of functionality, Linux is not very user friendly (you have to do lots of steps) in order to reduce the faults in the system (whether security or stability.) Microsoft on the other hand wants every user will be able to use a PC even though it is their first time to use one. In the process of doing that, if you disable all features (because of security) then nobody will buy their OS since I believe their support call center will be full 100% of the time.
it's like this, if you shout fire in a movie theater full of people, most will panic and there will be injuries and maybe deaths from being trampled upon by people.
if you do not shout fire, people may get trapped and die to.
so it is really difficult to choose which is right.
we are designing some small datacenters for companies. of course your costs should be kept at a minimum.
1. you do not need to pay any airconditioning anymore (unless you have enough money to run it 24/7/365.)
2. if you are going to place your rack in a small room, make sure that air will come from the bottom front of the rack (air pushing upwards vertically). this will allow for proper colling of racked equipment.
3. vent the heat at the upper rear where all the heat dissipates.
4. for servers, use low power like the tualatin series (700mhz with 1v i think). i suggest that you do not use AMD since they are very hot.
5. for network equipment, they do not generate much heat unless you get the gigabit routing switches with lots of cpu inside.
6. and seriously, when you say that a server/network equipment is high end, they are tested for conditions to work in case there are fan failures and no cooling, etc...
hope this helps you.
i am doing some structured cabling for a campus environment and i would like to share to you some tips that i have learned.
1. use the highest grade of cable available. use cat6 (even though the standard has not yet been established.) we did a testing and the best cable came from nordx/cdt using their cat6 4800lx cables.
2. do not put any telephone wire (cat3) cables. cat 5 is backward compatible to cat 4,3,2,1 and of course cat 6 will be for 5,4,3,2,1. but the cat3 cable is not forward compatible to cat6. you can crimp the rj45 on a pair of cat3.
3. treat the outlet to each room as more of utility. therefore, you should place it as much as you can across the room just like electrical outlets. besides, this is what structured cabling is all about.
4. i do not suggest that you use stp, this is because you will need to ground each end of the cable or else it will absorb all the interference. stp is used for industrial applications where there are motors, and other interference causing devices. what you do is get a good grade of shielding in the conduit instead.
5. assign a small room or cabinet in your house that you can centrally terminate the cables with connections to your switches, telco company, cable company, etc.
6. with regard to safety, use a fire proof coating in the cables but not necessarily plenum. plenum emits toxic substances when burned although it will take extra effort to burn it.
7. use patch cables. buy the factory made patch cables to terminate to a device at both ends instead of crimping it. it provides the lowest in terms of signal loss.
8. remember get a certification (these are offered by good manufacturers.) at least you can avail of warranty of parts and labor if anything goes wrong.
below is just my thoughts in helping you decide in using fiber or copper.
with regards to fiber, imho, in 10 years time, copper will be obsolete. fiber to the desktop will be as common as cat 5 installations. copper is reaching its limits. the proposed cat7 cable requires shielding in each copper pair and a shielding for the entire cable. the head will no longer be rj45. it will definitely be more expensive than buying fiber optic cables.
when using fiber optic, since your installation is in a house, you can use the multimode fiber optic cable. you can get the 62.5/125 or 50/125 core. distance is more of the decision what type to get. it depends on the equipment you get (see the specs.) remember that fiber optic should come in pairs. for connection heads, the most common is sc. almost all gigabit uses that with exception to some who use mt-rj.
imho, i think that nowadays, it is actually cheaper to create fiber optic cables than copper cables because fiber optic is made up of glass and is then made up of sand whereas copper is made from copper and you can actually melt the wires and sell the copper from it than fiber optic. manufacturers are just selling fiber optic for a higher price since it is in high demand in commercial applications (more $$$$.)
i should say that you may not need all of those information since you are not doing any commercial installation but i believe that when you do something, you must do it good! (besides it should last for 25 years or more.)
i did some research years ago about fuel cells. the viable solution is to buy the fuel cell generator that provides 200kwatts from UTC Fuel Cells.
this is actually a cool device that allows source from methane or natural gas.
they also have numerous installations made.
although at this time, i am not sure if there are other companies that have created generators made from fuel cells.
years years ago, i was using windows and yes i heard about many wonderful things about linux. so i tried installing linux in my computer. of course, i was a clueless user at that time without anyone to guide me. but i proceeded with it (i think it was still windows 95 and NT 4 at that time.) so it ended up into frustration, i was able to install it but i couldn't get things to work. and now i am using microsoft windows 2000, by bad experience with linux (redhat actually,) prevent me from supporting it even though i know it was good. maybe good for those nerds.
.net platform. we are developing software that will integrate many applications into one portal. and we plan to do it in around 6 months time.
at least now i am enjoying those active directory thing and the
the rating should be randomized in getting the input:
Request # 1:
rate this site from 1-10 with 10 being the best
Request # 2:
rate the site from 1-10 with 1 being the best
so an automated script cannot keep on voting for 10 or 1 for a site.
amd's 64bit hammer CPU and intel's itanium targets the server market where all the $$$ are.
for a server the main concern is: reliability, redundancy, and scalability
performance is just secondary.
for the intel itanium, intel has made very good profusion chipsets that will give very high I/O (PCI-X with lots of channels) and memory bandwidth (quad interleaved with chipkill) that will feed the fast CPU. just as serverworks is right now, we buy those expensive systems because we need the reliability and bandwidth. although serverworks is a 3rd party company (and intel tried to buy it from broadcom but to no avail,) it has a somewhat allegiance to the intel platform. they also make the best chipsets for pentium iii, pentium iii-s, pentium iii xeon CPUS. intel also designs very very very good motherboards and chipsets. like their new releases for the tualatin CPU, when you see the design and placements, it is far off from the asus, gigabyte, msi, etc... intel also creates server CPU that can handle big L2/L3 on-die caches running at core speed. they are also able to scale their processor to 9632 (have you seen any amd processors used in supercomputers not clusters such as beowulf?)
for amd, they may have a good cpu (better performance) but the problem is who manufactures the board and chipsets? for boards, they will most likely rely on asus, gigabyte, msi, etc... but i will not trust my money on them since they do not have features such as management, high i/o, and expertise in creating server boards. moreover, the chipset right now for the dual athlon is supposed to be amd but it flops big time. so motherboard manufacturers use the via chipset. you do not get all the performance (I/O, PCI) and reliability. so since this is the current situation for their workstation, what more for server?
so if amd wins the war with intel in the CPU arena, amd needs lots of resources to develop very good platform for servers (motherboard, chipset, memory controllers, compilers) before they can penetrate the real server market.
lastly, marketing is very important. if do-it-yourself servers are just the target of amd, they will not penetrate the real server market compared to intel, which is backed up by companies such as unisys, ibm, dell, sgi, hp, compaq, microsoft, and linux?.
i will say it is like intel offers end-to-end solutions for server platforms compared to amd that does only cpu and relies on partners to support their cpu.
itanium -> server -> big bucks
hammer -> desktop -> no bucks
itanium -> big fat heatsink
hammer -> liquid nitrogen coolant
itanium -> hp and compaq
hammer -> asus, gigabyte, msi
itanium -> 64 way
hammer -> 8 way
:-)
we are able to run windows 2000 advanced servers with reliability like lasting for months without reboots. (of course our reboots only come from patches and power failes due to the recent transfer of power substation in our area.)
we are able to integrate authentication and policy. this prevents students from messing up the workstations (windows 2000 pro.) because of this, our windows 2000 workstations are almost maintenance free, running for the entire semester without a need to reinstall. students are not even able to see the harddrives and can only run certain programs. they cannot download files and run them. the best of all, they cannot delete files of other people.
i will honestly say that windows now is stable than before. of course, we are very diligent in applying patches, service packs, etc...
with regards to the price (i do not live in the US), that same amount can give us the following benefits:
500 workstations w/ windows 2000 and office 2000. around 14 servers running us 2 quad xeon (700MHz w/ 1MB L2 and 4GB RAM) for sql 2000, 12 dual tualatin (like 1.26GHz with 2GB RAM @) for exchange, iis, etc. of course everything has a licensed software for that number of computers. by the way, all our servers are paired for redundancy.
we are also able to include 2.4TB worth of storage with a tape library (ultrium.) everything is running in a SAN environment.
that includes symmetra 16KVA ups and gigabit switches.
all of that for a recent quotation and we are finalizing our purchase plan. i think it is even much cheaper compared to the article.
in my belief, there are ups and downs for using windows 2000 and *nix systems. i am not saying that *nix sucks or anything but we are able to accomplish things what *nix does. it just needs the proper knowhow to manage windows 2000 without experiencing crashes. i sometimes joke that windows 2000 sys admins are much better since they have to keep up with weak security settings, nonstop security patches, software bugs, etc. unlike for *nix, it is by default secure, and you can leave it in the corner of the room and forget about it. but of course i still praise *nix people. my inspiration in running microsoft products come from you guys who constantly criticize microsoft.
and lastly, we use microsoft systems because of support options, software are easier to develop and deploy, and the price is much cheaper than using competitive softwares other than linux.
my last part is rather out of topic but i would like to ask if there is any initiative in the *nix world to do .net. integrate all php, perl, python, cgi, etc... into one system and have a very scalable database?
is there any policy capable *nix systems to create a domain of computers with homogeneous security permissions, settings, preferences?
i was surprised, i thought /. people are too biased against microsoft.
i forgot to place not in the 3rd paragraph. it should have read:
your output should not be dependent on the input (salary).