over their regular single CPU offerings for those of us that run multiple apps, but I truly would like to see the real heat/performance numbers, and whether the rumored performance throttling is enabled on these. If not, how bad is the heat generation?
From what I've read up to now, AMD's solution will outperform Intel's offering with significantly lower heat dissappation, making it a double winner. However, testing shipping units will finally quantify these processors. Can't wait for AMD's unit to ship and get compared.
Actually, the only reason I bought another hardware platform was to get a laptop, and Mac OS X. Why wait for Longhorn, and another 6 years before laptop technology can drive it when I can get a Powerbook that works better for most things than a Windows desktop today?
Well, first, WinFS will not make it into Longhorn. WinFS's network portion won't make it into the next Windows candidate. So, I'd say WinFS is just as much vapor as Cairo still is.
Given that, I'd say your comparison of WinFS to Spotlight comparing.NET to anything is spot on, as no one really knows what the vaporous.NET is anymore, including MS.
Is it a Server? A framework? A Service? A compiler? A language? A language concept? Quick, give me an answer. Hint, it's been all of those at any one time, although what most people relate it to now is the.NET VM and its associated languages. No one I know thinks anything else of.NET, including the.NET programmers I know. That's probably the most telling item.
What support costs? If you're runnning an app on the hardware and software it was designed for, and it's now production, there are no support costs other than the care and feeding (maintenance) that you'd have to do in any case.
Note that this hardware/software combo supplies a function. That function is static. The bugs in the function were worked out years ago (that's what it means to "go to production", not MS's definition of "it boots, let's sell it, warts and all")
As for the viruses and worms, who cares? They're not an issue in a properly protected server datacenter that supplies functions (note the focus on supplying functions? Those with a bent for new fangled jargon might recognize this concept as SOA;) Those functions are not OS functions, and hence the OS is not open to the outside. The functions are supplied by applications that are relatively bug-free, or have known but insignificant to the function bugs.
You'd have significantly more costs migrating this app to a "supported" OS. Witness the large number of financial applications still running on COBOL and hardware out of the 70s and 80s. Why? Because it still performs its function. As long as it continues to perform its function, there is no ROI in migrating to a newer, supported product.
1) That still doesn't solve the main issue I have, which is bringing up a window that's been minimized. If I have three finder windows, and I minimize 1, I cannot bring it up via the keyboard. The Cmd-` flips between active windows of a single app, it does not bring up the minimized ones.
3) See the problems that remain even with this enabled.
4) I'll repeat my statement on the prior response: DOH!
5) Nice, albeit rather unintuitive! Now, is there a way to show the entire path to folder in the title bar? That would complete my wants for Finder ease of usability. The folder drag is a nice almost expected feature.
7) see my posting that includes more than merely cut, paste, and copy. Movement, selection, etc, are included.
You're right, I wasn't nearly concise enough. The entire movement, selection, and cut and paste with the keyboard is far too non-standard. A large part of that can be blamed on the vendors. MS Office (yeah, I know, but it's a required app for some things for me) uses different movement key combos from, say, Safari. Can they be changed? Probably, just haven't spent the time yet.
There's also what I consider non-standard behavior within Firefox's text fields, where I'm typing this now. alt-left arrow jumps entire words to the left. alt-right arrow jumps across a word, then space, then word, then space. WTF? That's inconsistent even within the same app.
> 3. there's an option in Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard shortcuts to "turn on full access". tried that?
Still doesn't work for listboxes (drop downs). Also, it doesn't allow you to jump with the keyboard across multiple radio buttons and change your radio button selection, at least not that I can see.
> 4. tried clicking the down arrow to the right of the save name?
I don't know why I keep forgetting this. Just say DOH!
I regularly use three platforms; Windows, Linux (Fedora) and OSX. Conclusion? I cringe at having to use Windows. I find that once you learn UNIX it is faster to get anything done. Albeit you have to learn UNIX.
I have used many OSes (Everything from DOS and Win 3.x, 9x, NT 3.x, 4.x, OS2 (all), OSX, Linux (various versions dating back to 0.x kernels) VMS and various other big frame OSes)
My favorite OS? OS/2 by far, it was just a smooth pleasant experience. Why not OS X? Well, because my OS/2 experience was unfettered by having to unlearn numerous bad Windows habits I've picked up over the years, some even reinforced by KDE/Gnome (gasp - don't shoot me!).
To be fair, I've fixed most of my issues with OS X at this point with the addition of Quicksilver and some configuration options combined with unlearning bad windows habits.
There's many things to like about Apple's OS X, and I'm really looking forward to Tiger. Don't let the below list put you off, just realize as with any OS, there's some pimples you'll have to live with. If you're coming from the Windows world, you've probably gotten so used to them you don't even notice them anymore.
The things that currently bother me:
minimized windows not showing up with Cmd-Tab or Cmd-` (using Cmd-H hides all windows of that app, I wish I could hide just the active window sometimes)
The non-standard implementation of mod/arrow keys for moving about various applications. Apple should mandate a standard somewhere so that software vendors adhere to a common key mapping.
This one really bugs me: in all the main OS X browsers (Safari, Firefox, Camino) you cannot Tab to a checkbox or radio button. Why the hell not?!?! This is annoying as hell when filling out forms on a web page.
On save dialogs not being able to see a directory hierarchy. Seeing the list of most recently used folders is nice, but heirarchies are very useful)
Not being able to mouse click in Finder or a save dialog to go to the parent directory (keyboard Shift-Cmd-Up arrow is not intuitive, and requires jumping back and forth between mouse and keyboard. Apple should add a simple icon or the old wonderful ".." (No, I've not enabled show all files/folders in the Finder yet)
Speaking of enabling view all files/folders - functionality such as this could be much improved by a graphical configuration utility (gasp again - but trying to type interesting lines like "defaults set" or whatever the command is is relatively obscure and counter-intuitive for a graphical OS.
Again for a renowned user-friendly GUI app, it is suprisingly difficult to do some graphical copy, cut, and paste operations. There is a lack of consistent keyboard/mouse functionality across all apps and functions.
Note that I mainly post this in hopes of people providing insight into how to resolve some of these, while others are just noted.
But that is exactly my point. I shouldn't have to time it for software, nor should Apple want me to. Hardware, that's a different issue, but software? It's detrimental to Apple's bottom line if large numbers of folks did this.
BTW, I did wait for the PB hardware upgrade, but you can only wait so long before you need hardware, and the software upgrade just wasn't important enough to me to push out my purchase. (Not to mention the uncertainty about timing of Tiger in Feb)
My point is that Apple should perhaps think about their policy in light of the large numbers of folks that are now looking at Apples, with many converting, and that a policy of a software current version guarantee would be in the best interest. Why, because the window of time for someone considering an alternate hardware platform will be significantly shorter than the window required for waiting for a potential upgrade. Remove that barrier, and people can buy with a much larger peace of mind.
and hopefully that will also be their downfall, in that there are so many legitimate uses, that it's akin to making everyone use bikes instead of cars, because someone just might do something illegal with a car....
Well, the first virus wasn't written for a Windows system. The first set of major viruses also weren't written for Windows, but for UNIX systems. Amazingly enough, UNIX had the gall to run on more systems at the time. However, there weren't very many because most lacked the skill to compromise UNIX systems in this fashion, because of built in security in these systems.
Amazingly, even today, any updated UNIX box is infinitely harder to crack than a Windows XP SP2 system. Why? Because Windows truly lacks a meaningful security system, always has, and always will as long as the user runs as root by default.
In general I agree with you. I should mention I just bought a Powerbook less than 2 months ago. It would be nice to have a window within which your software was guaranteed to be current.
Several software manufacturers do this, primarily to move old stock out and to prevent a lag in sales.
While I personally can afford another $129, considering I just dropped $2K on apple in the past 2 months, perhaps they could see to upgrade me this time as part of that purchase? This would certainly engender good will among their customers.
would they separate those using Video conferencing tools, or sharing their personal pictures, or playing online games, or downloading a BitTorrent of a Linux distribution or seeding it, for that matter, podcasting, or any other number of legal activities that "could appear to be infringing" by bandwidth only metrics?
Seriously, these folks need to be laughed out of court.
I probably should have gone ahead and mentioned that Itanium is pretty much dead due to HP dropping support. However, just because it's effectively dead doesn't mean it was worse (recall Alpha?).
I do recall seeing some benchmark results where Itanium2's performed exceedingly well, but I didn't have a chance to read through it, hence my holding back on commenting that it completely blows performance wise. It might actually do well under certain tasking, but for any normal person, AMD is the king of the hill.
AMD certainly has the most interesting x86 technology out there. From a PC gamer's perspective, AMD probably is the most important chip maker out there. The jury's still out on businesses' opinions, however, the Opteron certainly smokes everything intel has except itanium2, which it also might smoke but I'm withholding judgement until I read better comparisons than I've seen to date.
As for cutting edge tech, AMD wins hands down in the x86 world. They did a nice edge run around Intel's GHz GHz GHz mantra, and they're beginning to reap the rewards. The dual and multi-core chips coming soon should finish the job once they're out and in tester's hands. Intel's dual core will either burn eggs or perform sluggishly, and they're still regrouping from their P4 mistakes and trying to come up with a new tech. Their size and brand is the only thing keeping them alive at the moment IMNSHO.
If you want to see cutting edge technology, look towards things like the Power5 (that's not a G5 btw;) and the Cell processors. One's a multi-core powerhouse, the other, well, it's an interesting amalgam of a core with multiple DSP chips to speed things up. I'm looking forward to the PS3 and its capabilities. (There are others too, but these may be the most likely to be seen by average consumers in some form or another)
In and of itself, it is not inherently wrong to make money off of production/distribution, it's how all factories work after all. However, it is wrong when the content producers create a little monopoly for themselves, and then try to use new legislation to maintain that monopoly so they can set prices and other illegal activities done by monopolies. That's our current situation.
Actually, this quote is much more appropriate to the current situation than you may think. The monks were the "distributors", much like the members of the RIAA/MPAA. P2P represents a threat to the "monks", not the artists, at least not directly. As an example, check out the South by Southwest download. A massive publicity download for lots of mostly unknown bands. There's also another band that's rejected the current "monks" who is doing quite well, although their name escapes me at the moment.
I disagree with you that this is no big deal. It's truly something I don't want to see, and makes the concept of building my own DVR box all the more appealing, especially if I do the HD3000 before June.
Not that skill isn't involved, but conning folks takes lots of luck and a serious lack of ethics/morals. We're not talking about selling here (well, maybe we are, con jobs are, after all, selling) but of presenting something as it's not, i.e., fraud.
I have this computer here (presents an eraser) that you just can't live without.... I have an operating system here (presents flaky bootstrap WIndows code) that will run everything you can throw at it and an Office Suite (presents flaky self-corrupting badly integrated Office 2004) that will run reliably in 256MB of RAM that you can trust all your business office computing needs to....
While I tend to think Mark Cuban got lucky once, he's built on his one lucky break and extended it into many. So, while luck played a part, and may have helped him along his entire career to date, he definitely had lots of chances to screw himself up (and his reality show is a prime example of that). Look at Branson (Virgin billionare), same kind of guy.
Take another "lucky" man: everyone's fave Bill Gates. His "luck" was conning lots of folks, and he's excellent at it. He's still successfully conning hundreds of millions, and hence his conitnuing run of "luck".
True e-commerce = big sites, and not necessarily customer facing sites such as amazon and ebay, but also business to business exchanges.
Otherwise, for "lower-volume" sites, you might as well use MySQL or Postgres, depeding on your needs, it would definitely save you some serious cash in the long run.
I have never had any problem with system stability when working with NT systems. What are you running on your servers, win98? What MS applications make a 'system unstable'? It sounds to me like you haven't invested any time in learning how to properly admin a windows server. I have a friend who it a Linux zealot, and he sounds exactly like you. He sporradically dabbled with MS systems, without truly learning them, and runs around talking about how they are 'crappy'.
If you've never had a stability problem with an NT based server, you've never stressed them, meaning you've seriously over-engineered your systems. (After all, if you buy an 8-way Opteron box to run 1 transaction per minute, going to 2 transactions per minute won't stress you much, will it?) Most of us run in the real world, with finite budgets, and attempt to control costs by not buying 20 boxes when 2 will do, nor 8 way systems when 2 way systems are the right answer.
NT 4.0, btw, was inherently unstable when it was released. Check out SP1 which happened to fix the page counter bug. (A mismatch between an internal 20 bit counter and an external 32 bit counter caused the page file to corrupt after the 20 bit counter rolled over) 2K had some issues, especially using IIS 4.0/5.0. Those POSes could actually corrupt your registry and your disk, depending on what went wrong.
MS apps that potentially make systems unstable:
Office
IIS
MS SQL
Outlook (yes, that should be part of office, but this gem sucks so badly, it needs to be listed on its own)
(OK, so you can create problems with any of these systems by bad design, but none have issues that you cannot get around with good design - MS SQL has issues that you cannot work around.)
For example ?
Lock Escalation. It can completely kill your DB's throughput. A limited work around is a properly separated DB architecture with ever increasing numbers of machines. Oracle will handle the same load on a single box.
I can - Exchange.
Active Directory+Group Policy would make a fairly strong showing as well, if one of the criteria was "supporting and managing lots of desktop PCs".
Exchange? One of the bigger POSes out there, unfortunately, I'd have to agree that for generic perceived ease of use, exchange wins hands down over its competitors at this time - a true marketing triumph. However, if you've ever had to upgrade the JET DB, or deal with a corruption within the Jet DB, or any number of other issues with Exchange, you would most certainly not claim it as a good system. I will admit that I cannot name a better system as it's been a while since I've been active in that field, so I'm not up to date on current offerings outside of Exchange and Notes.
ADS sucks rocks, especially in relation to its use in Exchange. Before ADS, Exchange 5.5 could deliver a DL message to 10000 users on 10 servers (1000 per server) in under 15 minutes. Delivering it to a mere 1000 users on 1 server now takes hours. (I'm sure this was affected by concurrent access to the server by employees while it was being processed, but so were the 5.5 servers.)
NDS is still a better performing system than ADS, and a simple LDAP server itself is usually more appropriate, and certainly more configurable.
Look at what happened to OS/2. They finally got win32 to run just about everything MS had at the time, and MS found a loophole with the maximum memory request at 2GB barrier. OS/2's VM only had a 512MB max. Hence, no Office 95 app would run under OS/2's win32 module. I can't imagine the same thing wouldn't happen if Mono or WINE succeeds....
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MS already has plans for your second core.
over their regular single CPU offerings for those of us that run multiple apps, but I truly would like to see the real heat/performance numbers, and whether the rumored performance throttling is enabled on these. If not, how bad is the heat generation?
From what I've read up to now, AMD's solution will outperform Intel's offering with significantly lower heat dissappation, making it a double winner. However, testing shipping units will finally quantify these processors. Can't wait for AMD's unit to ship and get compared.
Actually, the only reason I bought another hardware platform was to get a laptop, and Mac OS X. Why wait for Longhorn, and another 6 years before laptop technology can drive it when I can get a Powerbook that works better for most things than a Windows desktop today?
Well, first, WinFS will not make it into Longhorn. WinFS's network portion won't make it into the next Windows candidate. So, I'd say WinFS is just as much vapor as Cairo still is.
.NET to anything is spot on, as no one really knows what the vaporous .NET is anymore, including MS.
.NET VM and its associated languages. No one I know thinks anything else of .NET, including the .NET programmers I know. That's probably the most telling item.
Given that, I'd say your comparison of WinFS to Spotlight comparing
Is it a Server? A framework? A Service? A compiler? A language? A language concept? Quick, give me an answer. Hint, it's been all of those at any one time, although what most people relate it to now is the
What support costs? If you're runnning an app on the hardware and software it was designed for, and it's now production, there are no support costs other than the care and feeding (maintenance) that you'd have to do in any case.
Note that this hardware/software combo supplies a function. That function is static. The bugs in the function were worked out years ago (that's what it means to "go to production", not MS's definition of "it boots, let's sell it, warts and all")
As for the viruses and worms, who cares? They're not an issue in a properly protected server datacenter that supplies functions (note the focus on supplying functions? Those with a bent for new fangled jargon might recognize this concept as SOA;) Those functions are not OS functions, and hence the OS is not open to the outside. The functions are supplied by applications that are relatively bug-free, or have known but insignificant to the function bugs.
You'd have significantly more costs migrating this app to a "supported" OS. Witness the large number of financial applications still running on COBOL and hardware out of the 70s and 80s. Why? Because it still performs its function. As long as it continues to perform its function, there is no ROI in migrating to a newer, supported product.
3) See the problems that remain even with this enabled.
4) I'll repeat my statement on the prior response: DOH!
5) Nice, albeit rather unintuitive! Now, is there a way to show the entire path to folder in the title bar? That would complete my wants for Finder ease of usability. The folder drag is a nice almost expected feature.
7) see my posting that includes more than merely cut, paste, and copy. Movement, selection, etc, are included.
You're right, I wasn't nearly concise enough. The entire movement, selection, and cut and paste with the keyboard is far too non-standard. A large part of that can be blamed on the vendors. MS Office (yeah, I know, but it's a required app for some things for me) uses different movement key combos from, say, Safari. Can they be changed? Probably, just haven't spent the time yet.
There's also what I consider non-standard behavior within Firefox's text fields, where I'm typing this now. alt-left arrow jumps entire words to the left. alt-right arrow jumps across a word, then space, then word, then space. WTF? That's inconsistent even within the same app.
> 3. there's an option in Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard shortcuts to "turn on full access". tried that?
Still doesn't work for listboxes (drop downs). Also, it doesn't allow you to jump with the keyboard across multiple radio buttons and change your radio button selection, at least not that I can see.
> 4. tried clicking the down arrow to the right of the save name?
I don't know why I keep forgetting this. Just say DOH!
My favorite OS? OS/2 by far, it was just a smooth pleasant experience. Why not OS X? Well, because my OS/2 experience was unfettered by having to unlearn numerous bad Windows habits I've picked up over the years, some even reinforced by KDE/Gnome (gasp - don't shoot me!).
To be fair, I've fixed most of my issues with OS X at this point with the addition of Quicksilver and some configuration options combined with unlearning bad windows habits.
There's many things to like about Apple's OS X, and I'm really looking forward to Tiger. Don't let the below list put you off, just realize as with any OS, there's some pimples you'll have to live with. If you're coming from the Windows world, you've probably gotten so used to them you don't even notice them anymore.
The things that currently bother me:
- minimized windows not showing up with Cmd-Tab or Cmd-` (using Cmd-H hides all windows of that app, I wish I could hide just the active window sometimes)
- The non-standard implementation of mod/arrow keys for moving about various applications. Apple should mandate a standard somewhere so that software vendors adhere to a common key mapping.
- This one really bugs me: in all the main OS X browsers (Safari, Firefox, Camino) you cannot Tab to a checkbox or radio button. Why the hell not?!?! This is annoying as hell when filling out forms on a web page.
- On save dialogs not being able to see a directory hierarchy. Seeing the list of most recently used folders is nice, but heirarchies are very useful)
- Not being able to mouse click in Finder or a save dialog to go to the parent directory (keyboard Shift-Cmd-Up arrow is not intuitive, and requires jumping back and forth between mouse and keyboard. Apple should add a simple icon or the old wonderful ".." (No, I've not enabled show all files/folders in the Finder yet)
- Speaking of enabling view all files/folders - functionality such as this could be much improved by a graphical configuration utility (gasp again - but trying to type interesting lines like "defaults set" or whatever the command is is relatively obscure and counter-intuitive for a graphical OS.
- Again for a renowned user-friendly GUI app, it is suprisingly difficult to do some graphical copy, cut, and paste operations. There is a lack of consistent keyboard/mouse functionality across all apps and functions.
Note that I mainly post this in hopes of people providing insight into how to resolve some of these, while others are just noted.So that explains my one accepted submission!!! Now that you've revealed the secret, we can expect thousands of new articles.....
But that is exactly my point. I shouldn't have to time it for software, nor should Apple want me to. Hardware, that's a different issue, but software? It's detrimental to Apple's bottom line if large numbers of folks did this.
BTW, I did wait for the PB hardware upgrade, but you can only wait so long before you need hardware, and the software upgrade just wasn't important enough to me to push out my purchase. (Not to mention the uncertainty about timing of Tiger in Feb)
My point is that Apple should perhaps think about their policy in light of the large numbers of folks that are now looking at Apples, with many converting, and that a policy of a software current version guarantee would be in the best interest. Why, because the window of time for someone considering an alternate hardware platform will be significantly shorter than the window required for waiting for a potential upgrade. Remove that barrier, and people can buy with a much larger peace of mind.
and hopefully that will also be their downfall, in that there are so many legitimate uses, that it's akin to making everyone use bikes instead of cars, because someone just might do something illegal with a car....
Well, the first virus wasn't written for a Windows system. The first set of major viruses also weren't written for Windows, but for UNIX systems. Amazingly enough, UNIX had the gall to run on more systems at the time. However, there weren't very many because most lacked the skill to compromise UNIX systems in this fashion, because of built in security in these systems.
Amazingly, even today, any updated UNIX box is infinitely harder to crack than a Windows XP SP2 system. Why? Because Windows truly lacks a meaningful security system, always has, and always will as long as the user runs as root by default.
In general I agree with you. I should mention I just bought a Powerbook less than 2 months ago. It would be nice to have a window within which your software was guaranteed to be current.
Several software manufacturers do this, primarily to move old stock out and to prevent a lag in sales.
While I personally can afford another $129, considering I just dropped $2K on apple in the past 2 months, perhaps they could see to upgrade me this time as part of that purchase? This would certainly engender good will among their customers.
Seriously, these folks need to be laughed out of court.
I probably should have gone ahead and mentioned that Itanium is pretty much dead due to HP dropping support. However, just because it's effectively dead doesn't mean it was worse (recall Alpha?).
I do recall seeing some benchmark results where Itanium2's performed exceedingly well, but I didn't have a chance to read through it, hence my holding back on commenting that it completely blows performance wise. It might actually do well under certain tasking, but for any normal person, AMD is the king of the hill.
AMD certainly has the most interesting x86 technology out there. From a PC gamer's perspective, AMD probably is the most important chip maker out there. The jury's still out on businesses' opinions, however, the Opteron certainly smokes everything intel has except itanium2, which it also might smoke but I'm withholding judgement until I read better comparisons than I've seen to date.
As for cutting edge tech, AMD wins hands down in the x86 world. They did a nice edge run around Intel's GHz GHz GHz mantra, and they're beginning to reap the rewards. The dual and multi-core chips coming soon should finish the job once they're out and in tester's hands. Intel's dual core will either burn eggs or perform sluggishly, and they're still regrouping from their P4 mistakes and trying to come up with a new tech. Their size and brand is the only thing keeping them alive at the moment IMNSHO.
If you want to see cutting edge technology, look towards things like the Power5 (that's not a G5 btw;) and the Cell processors. One's a multi-core powerhouse, the other, well, it's an interesting amalgam of a core with multiple DSP chips to speed things up. I'm looking forward to the PS3 and its capabilities. (There are others too, but these may be the most likely to be seen by average consumers in some form or another)
In and of itself, it is not inherently wrong to make money off of production/distribution, it's how all factories work after all. However, it is wrong when the content producers create a little monopoly for themselves, and then try to use new legislation to maintain that monopoly so they can set prices and other illegal activities done by monopolies. That's our current situation.
Actually, this quote is much more appropriate to the current situation than you may think. The monks were the "distributors", much like the members of the RIAA/MPAA. P2P represents a threat to the "monks", not the artists, at least not directly. As an example, check out the South by Southwest download. A massive publicity download for lots of mostly unknown bands. There's also another band that's rejected the current "monks" who is doing quite well, although their name escapes me at the moment.
I disagree with you that this is no big deal. It's truly something I don't want to see, and makes the concept of building my own DVR box all the more appealing, especially if I do the HD3000 before June.
Not that skill isn't involved, but conning folks takes lots of luck and a serious lack of ethics/morals. We're not talking about selling here (well, maybe we are, con jobs are, after all, selling) but of presenting something as it's not, i.e., fraud.
I have this computer here (presents an eraser) that you just can't live without.... I have an operating system here (presents flaky bootstrap WIndows code) that will run everything you can throw at it and an Office Suite (presents flaky self-corrupting badly integrated Office 2004) that will run reliably in 256MB of RAM that you can trust all your business office computing needs to....
Good points.
While I tend to think Mark Cuban got lucky once, he's built on his one lucky break and extended it into many. So, while luck played a part, and may have helped him along his entire career to date, he definitely had lots of chances to screw himself up (and his reality show is a prime example of that). Look at Branson (Virgin billionare), same kind of guy.
Take another "lucky" man: everyone's fave Bill Gates. His "luck" was conning lots of folks, and he's excellent at it. He's still successfully conning hundreds of millions, and hence his conitnuing run of "luck".
True e-commerce = big sites, and not necessarily customer facing sites such as amazon and ebay, but also business to business exchanges.
Otherwise, for "lower-volume" sites, you might as well use MySQL or Postgres, depeding on your needs, it would definitely save you some serious cash in the long run.
I have never had any problem with system stability when working with NT systems. What are you running on your servers, win98? What MS applications make a 'system unstable'? It sounds to me like you haven't invested any time in learning how to properly admin a windows server. I have a friend who it a Linux zealot, and he sounds exactly like you. He sporradically dabbled with MS systems, without truly learning them, and runs around talking about how they are 'crappy'.
If you've never had a stability problem with an NT based server, you've never stressed them, meaning you've seriously over-engineered your systems. (After all, if you buy an 8-way Opteron box to run 1 transaction per minute, going to 2 transactions per minute won't stress you much, will it?) Most of us run in the real world, with finite budgets, and attempt to control costs by not buying 20 boxes when 2 will do, nor 8 way systems when 2 way systems are the right answer.
NT 4.0, btw, was inherently unstable when it was released. Check out SP1 which happened to fix the page counter bug. (A mismatch between an internal 20 bit counter and an external 32 bit counter caused the page file to corrupt after the 20 bit counter rolled over) 2K had some issues, especially using IIS 4.0/5.0. Those POSes could actually corrupt your registry and your disk, depending on what went wrong.
MS apps that potentially make systems unstable:
- Office
- IIS
- MS SQL
- Outlook (yes, that should be part of office, but this gem sucks so badly, it needs to be listed on its own)
- Visio
That's enough for now.ADS sucks rocks, especially in relation to its use in Exchange. Before ADS, Exchange 5.5 could deliver a DL message to 10000 users on 10 servers (1000 per server) in under 15 minutes. Delivering it to a mere 1000 users on 1 server now takes hours. (I'm sure this was affected by concurrent access to the server by employees while it was being processed, but so were the 5.5 servers.)
NDS is still a better performing system than ADS, and a simple LDAP server itself is usually more appropriate, and certainly more configurable.
Look at what happened to OS/2. They finally got win32 to run just about everything MS had at the time, and MS found a loophole with the maximum memory request at 2GB barrier. OS/2's VM only had a 512MB max. Hence, no Office 95 app would run under OS/2's win32 module. I can't imagine the same thing wouldn't happen if Mono or WINE succeeds....