Readers comment on Windows NT SunWorld Online respondents considering, using NT By Mark Cappel

April  1996

Mail this article to a friend

The comments are reproduced as received; only some minor spelling and punctuation errors have been corrected. -- Editors

Topic: Tell us what you think about a Windows NT

Date: Fri Mar 1 08:33:34 PST 1996

Often frustrating to administer, but a great platform for photoshop.

Date: Fri Mar 1 08:08:32 PST 1996

I have had mixed results with NT. I find that it works well for technical users as a general-purpose workstation, but the lack of _REAL_ support for 16-bit apps dooms it our platform of choice for typical end-users. The 16- bit apps tend to crash quite regularly, just like in Windows 3.1x. The only difference is that you have to log out and log back in instead of rebooting the server. We have also had a few instances of NT users inadvertently opening up their entire server to access because they clicked the wrong box. :( NT does have some pretty useful purposes, though. I currently

Date: Fri Mar 1 11:19:23 PST 1996

We have implemented NT as part of an Automated Sales Force project. NT servers in each remote Sales office contain replicated Lotus Notes databases and custom applications. NT was chose becuase of the ease of integration with the Windows/95 laptops that each salesperson will receive. Personally I find NT easy to use but one very weak area is remote server management. A lot of the tools must be run at the console, although I've heard that Microsoft's SMS product will address that in a future release.

Date: Fri Mar 1 11:37:05 PST 1996

As an Integration firm the company I work for has decided to purchase an NT server with the concept of developing expertise on the system in order to be able to sell and integrate it. My experiences with NT have thus far been minimul, however I have been unimpressed with what I have seen so far.

Date: Fri Mar 1 12:19:22 PST 1996

About to evaluate it as Microsoft Exchange Server...

Date: Fri Mar 1 13:06:24 PST 1996

It is pointy-clicky. it lacks full Unix functionality, but to idiot purchasing manager, its the pointy-clicky that matters, so we will be purchasing more of them. NT is the final wave (and really still a FUTURE) wave of the evil empire to totally dominate all desktop computing. (and to a great extent, server computing) The bad news is, its looking like it will succeed. There is no good news.

Date: Fri Mar 1 13:24:45 PST 1996

NT is being used/evaluated in my department (Integration Services). It's been pretty easy to use, but not terribly easy to learn. Although it's primarily a GUI-driven OS, it is still quite complex to learn from a sysadmin perspective. The integration features seem very good, with the exception of no NFS and no ability to print to Unix systems which are NOT running lpd.

Date: Fri Mar 1 19:38:38 PST 1996

A real kludge. NT represents what I like least about computing - lowest common denominator schlock that pretends to be something more than it is and gets away with it due to market ignorance. Troublesome in that it is unstable and expensive since you must buy monolithic apps to do the chores of shell scripts. Inflexible and clunky.

Date: Fri Mar 1 17:10:00 PST 1996

There are two groups: NT devotees and NT haters, so the religious wars are kept inside our company. People accustomed with Unix are suprised mainly with fatness and unstability of NT and NT applications, but the NT people are optimistic about the awaited new versions and there is very strong customers demand for NT.

Date: Fri Mar 1 22:48:37 PST 1996

It's been easy to set up compared to Unix, about the same as Novell.

Date: Fri Mar 1 23:04:39 PST 1996

Windows NT is easier to use than character based systems. NT running Windows 95 will be a good combination. It has been received well at our job site. Also the Windows machines a lot cheaper than Unix boxes. But for mission critical & Internet applications i feel Solaris 2.4 or greater would be a good try. But future alone will decide this.

Date: Sat Mar 2 03:29:40 PST 1996

It looked nice, but I've seen it unrecoverable after a powerfailure. It's a @#$%@#$% to connect printers to print to/from it from/to Solaris/Unix boxes because of printer filters etc.

Date: Sat Mar 2 08:52:55 PST 1996

Current usage largely limited to server for Microsoft SQL Servers. Will be testing NT Workstation connectivity to both NT and Novell file servers for deployment to end-user desktops, with such deployment to start as early as May, 1996. Reason for NT on desktop is to provide access to larger amounts of memory, to stabilize the desktop and reduce crashes, and to take advantage of better multi-tasking. NT will be relatively easy to learn, by far, compared to Unix, for users and sysadmins. It is well-received and in demand in our shop

Date: Sat Mar 2 09:00:11 PST 1996

Using NT and Win/Win95 as desktop systems from the beginning. Same with NT Server.

Date: Sat Mar 2 09:09:34 PST 1996

Very easy to use, adminster, and integrate.

Date: Sat Mar 2 09:37:58 PST 1996

nt, despite the fact that it will rule, at some level of configuration and tuning becomes just as terse as Unix but has no tools (regedit). Good luck nt users.

Date: Sat Mar 2 10:12:25 PST 1996

We ship our products on SunOS 4.X, Solaris 2.X, MacOS 7.5, Win XX and NT. The marketing that NT is Posix compliant is a lie!

Date: Sat Mar 2 10:30:29 PST 1996

I simply don't allow it.

Date: Sat Mar 2 10:51:46 PST 1996

NT is easy to setup! Within 25 minutes I can have an NT server up and running, a web server running, a ftp server running, and even a small database package. It's really easy to work with... The only other Unix/Linux OS I know that is this easy is Caldera. NT and Multiproccessor systems (quad pentium pros) are the way to go if you not set on SPARCs.

Date: Sat Mar 2 10:58:22 PST 1996

We've been using NT Workstation as a desktop OS on all of our new Pentium systems. I particularly enjoy its ease of use and administration combined with its performance, crash resistance, security, and ability to run MS Windows apps. In fact, I've had great results running NT (currently the 4.0 beta with the Win95 shell) on my 486 at home, which has 24MB of RAM. I would rather upgrade the RAM on older PC's so that they can run NT than worry about the instability and 16-bit DOS foundation of Windows 95. I have much less experien

Date: Sat Mar 2 11:09:42 PST 1996

we tried NT at our department and they SUCK HARD.

Date: Sat Mar 2 11:10:51 PST 1996

NT is fairly easy to learn, but is still a very immature product. It lacks the flexibility and power of Unix, and tries too hard to shield the user from the guts of the OS. So in the event that something goes wrong with your NT server, more often than not, it is extremely hard to find out what. A distributed display environment (or similar) that Microsoft supports is also badly needed for NT.

Date: Sat Mar 2 13:02:17 PST 1996

Not used very mutch for the moment. We had a choise for Sysbase severs and that was between NT and SPARC Solaris. The choise was SPARC Solaris.

Date: Sat Mar 2 13:27:59 PST 1996

Don't quite know what its good for yet.

Date: Sat Mar 2 13:29:57 PST 1996

In general, experience with NT has been very good. It appears to be Very stable robust and easy to use. Performance-wise better than Unix in file and print serving. I think Sun should position Solaris for Intel (and/or for PowerPC) as a direct competition for NT (both server and workstation) -- IMHO at the moment it is not (more expensive, less advertised). We are using NT on Intel (wkstation & server), and Solaris 2.x on both SPARC and Intel. On Intel I end up using NT more than Solaris simply because there are more applications and connectivity tools.

Date: Sat Mar 2 15:00:12 PST 1996

Very inexpensive! Easy to set-up. However, not all that powerfull! Easy to integrate with DOS machines, and easy to learn!

Date: Sat Mar 2 15:55:04 PST 1996

1. We find that NT is suitable for small to moderate databases (< 15 GB). 2. NT is easy to administer and has good remote access capabilities. 3. NT is not yet mature and a number of vendors don't support it as well as they do Unix. 4. NT is a superior desktop operating system require less overall support from the technical staff than other Windows products (or Unix for that matter.) 5. NT will replace OS/2 as a departmental server. Pricing and features will determ

Date: Sat Mar 2 18:52:44 PST 1996

NT is stable, easy to learn and administer, and very compatible with DOS and 16-bit Windows apps. My experiences are very positive. With NT gaining lots of support, and NT-capable hardware being inexpensive, Unix had better watch out.

Date: Sat Mar 2 19:35:28 PST 1996

Not pleasant. We use NT server v3.5 as a print server and a MS Office application server. It serves a network of four Windows for Workgroups workstations. Our experiences with it have not been pleasant. It is hard to learn. It crashes on a weekly basis. Since our technical support license agreement has expired we also have no where to go for support. Yes, there's always the Internet but finding support for NT on the Internet isn't easy. Now contrast this with Solaris. While Solaris can also be hard to learn, it is a stable OS. In the past four months, we've only had to reboot once. Also, the online docum

Date: Sun Mar 3 04:57:57 PST 1996

no experience yet

Date: Sun Mar 3 09:16:44 PST 1996

I have found NT easy to use and packed with several useful extras (like multiprotocol server ). I donīt like the fact than NT is a resource hog: You need a really powerful hardaware ( many memory ) to use it even like a Desktop. I think than Unix vendors most be warned and make to Unix more easier to use and more open to other netowrk protocols line Netware and AppleTalk.

Date: Sun Mar 3 10:51:56 PST 1996

Porting our software to the Win32 environment was fairly straightforward. Customer demand is high. (We are a software company. We do not use NT for internal systems but we ship our product on NT as well as several flavors of Unix.)

Date: Sun Mar 3 11:37:55 PST 1996

I hate to admit it ... NT is a pretty decent operating system. Programming on it is very easy (Visual C++ 4.0). The biggest advantage that I see is that sharing information is very easy and can be controlled by the workstation user.

Date: Sun Mar 3 13:55:37 PST 1996

NT has been evaluated in a beta version. We are planning to go to it to bring Intel and Alpha systems into a common networkk and operation.

Date: Sun Mar 3 15:31:27 PST 1996

Great OS but somewhat difficult to get/provide support.

Date: Sun Mar 3 17:55:24 PST 1996

It's been mixed. For non-techies, its been easy to pick up if they have had Win3.x experience -- much less intimidating than Unix shell prompts. It seems to take more "horsepower" for NT to handle a given amount of work than Novell or Unix. I don't have numbers to back it up but I'd guess that both Novell and Unix would take less of a CPU to, say, saturate an Ethernet.

Date: Sun Mar 3 20:18:27 PST 1996

I personally consider NT limited relative to *ix, but easier for a relative novice to set up. I feel it's had a strong marketing campaign, with relatively little effort put into its development. Locally, management appears to have decided to develop NT abilities in staff - not out of a view that NT is better suited to server roles than *ix, but because it's sick of fighting users who desparately want to see us go with Microsoft products. I fear that Microsoft will find it easier to make advances for itself, because of its relative lack of concern with standards - and its relatively large installed base.

Date: Sun Mar 3 20:20:25 PST 1996

NT has been well-received in our organization. We also use NT as a Gateway to NetWare. No problems with NT configuration.

Date: Sun Mar 3 22:17:54 PST 1996

With Samba NT is easy to intergrate with Unix. Easy to learn the basic, but some the setup for advance features is poorly documented. We have found NT to be a great replacement for File/Print servers for out old NFS servers only for PC Clients. Windows based clients dictated the use of NT in our company. Unix is only application and development we use.

Date: Sun Mar 3 23:53:12 PST 1996

NT is difficult to use mostly because of the weak UI. However, that will be changing soon. We only use NT for custom application development. If Unix at least had a consistent UI across different versions, it would be more appealing for this use.

Date: Mon Mar 4 00:08:01 PST 1996

Stable, great Network interface. Runs Win applications. Good security.

Date: Mon Mar 4 02:42:16 PST 1996

NT is just a lot of hype, but it works fine for the desktop. Real servers for critical applications are and will be Unix-based. Bill Gates is getting too big!

Date: Mon Mar 4 13:42:26 MET 1996

There currently is a big push towards NT. A few major reasons are, * Price / Performance for database servers (i.e., Solaris/Sybase vs NT/MicroSoft SQL Server) * Institutional Workstation Support (Centralized Control & Support of Desktops)

Date: Mon Mar 4 04:47:17 PST 1996

We installed it a month ago to run our new engineering data vault. It was easy to install and integrate into our existing network. .. I still prefer Unix Maybe the next Rev of NT will change this view. We are still evaluating.

Date: Mon Mar 4 04:54:14 PST 1996

People who are "somewhat" technical like NT because it looks like Windows. They can fire it up and use programs written for it. They don't have to learn anything new. However, I am a programmer and want to begin learning a bit about NT since the market will eventually drive NT to the desktop (and perhaps take over the server).

Date: Mon Mar 4 05:20:01 PST 1996

Well received by technical support, application developers and end users. It's a breeze to integrate compared to competition. Formal training is required, but it is not difficult to learn. All Novell users and systems personnel are clamoring to get to NT.

Date: Mon Mar 4 05:43:50 PST 1996

There are many ex-Novell employees who recognize and espouse the benefits of NT over Netware. We are still young in the Unix world, but we can recognize its usefulness. We, however, prefer to develop less complex solutions for our customers, and Unix, to date, defines the antithesis of complex. NT is the answer. Also, for those folks, like myself, who need a bit more *oomph* for their Intel PC's, NT may be the answer. NT, so far, has been easy to work on, find support for, and integrate with other systems.

Date: Mon Mar 4 05:46:23 PST 1996

I travel a lot for my company and therefore use a laptop which I plug into a docking station when in the home office. I use the multiple boot option under DOS to configure my environment based upon the I am visiting. I have recently experimented with Windows NT on my IBM 755C laptop. 1. The is no real multi-boot option (I can find) so that I can have a system which adapts to its environment. 2. I loaded the NT OS through my docked enviroment with an extrenal monitor and keyboard. When I removed the machine from the docking station and rebooted, the integrated numeric keypad is locked on.

Date: Mon Mar 4 06:08:30 PST 1996

NT: Easy to lern! NT: C:>\ (Do I need to say anymore :-) SunOS x.x : I sit in my room an administrating the whole site! Win Nice Try: I spend time that I don't have running around with a pack of CD's... When you install something on a network drive, the product often wants to write something to your C:. Then later you install a new PC, this time with 2 HD's and you have NT on D: this time. At this moment you discover that you can't use the installed version on the net because it points to C: on some older machine. Thank you MS! / Erik

Date: Mon Mar 4 06:35:46 PST 1996

We are using Unix for all our database servers. Windows and 95 for Offfice suites and NT and Novell for file servers. When Microsoft integrates the ease of from Windows 95, NT will become a very powerful OS. For now the learing curve between NT and Solaris is about the same. NT 3.5 is less stable than Solaris 2.5

Date: Mon Mar 4 06:48:09 PST 1996

We are the technical department of a research institute. NT is brought into our computing infrastructure by the demand of projects developing applications with frontends for Windows 95/NT. So in some of our projects NT is used as 1. controller for Windows 95 development stations 2. as development platform itself. To straight out the control over the momentary multiple domains set up during the last year, we will ourself set up 1. an institute-wide domain controller 2. use NT as a file server for those projects and some Windows 3.x/95/NT workstations used by our administration.

Date: Mon Mar 4 07:15:16 PST 1996

NT is adequate as a file server. As a desktop O/S it still has a way to go. Microsoft's idea of making NT better is to throw more hardware at it. I have a version of Linux that runs rings around NT -- while still providing the same functionality. I think NT is an easy choice for many, because it doesn't require a lot of knowledge for the "generic" setup. Mostly just point and click and you are done. However, once you start getting into the nitty-gritty for a full-scale installation, then you really have to know what you are doing.

Date: Mon Mar 4 07:18:12 PST 1996

NT is easy to learn if you are already familiar with Windows. It works fine for small jobs but does not appear to be scalable to large applications yet.

Date: Mon Mar 4 07:48:25 PST 1996

Easy to use, plug and play, well-received at my site, easy to integrate

Date: Mon Mar 4 08:28:18 PST 1996

NT has proven itself as an easy to install and maintain network server and a powerful development environment. NT is easy to use, easy to integrate and very well received. There needs to be more shrink-wrapped apps that take advantage of the multi-thread capability and exploit the performance capability of NT.

Date: Mon Mar 4 08:44:21 PST 1996

We are using NT to serve Windows/Windows95 desktop machines in offices and a lab of NT workstations. Most of the users don't notice the difference between Windows and Windows NT. NT is not easy to use. It has numerous shortcommings as an easily managed server. Many utilities that should be standard, have to be purchased from a third party. Utilities such as a quota manager.

Date: Mon Mar 4 08:47:30 PST 1996

We have no experience. The message seems to be "just do it". This is because no other supplier is dominating the end-user & departmental market. There are too many confusing/conflicting stories about Unix to make it the preferred long term choice. Microsoft is still the dominent supplier of Windows based OS in the commercial world for end-users. It is the end-user that will force the decision to use NT as the local server OS. This will be done by arguing that support costs will be lower. This position will only change if MS gets significantly bad NT press.

Date: Mon Mar 4 09:08:54 PST 1996

Works great, easy to use for endusers used with DOS/Windows. System administration is much easier to learn then in Unix. NT 3.51 misses ascii- based programs for system administration. I hate DOS bat-programming, they need perl or some other language as a standard utility with the OS. With the coming utilities based on SMS it will be possible for a small group to manage system administration for a big site with many NT workstation desktops.

Date: Mon Mar 4 09:18:05 PST 1996

Yes. NT strenghts are * Integrated Application Suite. * User Friendly Interface. * Cheap Price.

Date: Mon Mar 4 10:03:06 PST 1996

I haven't been exposed to NT yet and I'm not aware of any pro's or con's within our organization.

Date: Mon Mar 4 10:51:46 PST 1996

NT is used as a PC file server. We also use it as a Windows on Unix product, using WinDD from Tektronix. I have found that it is not as easy to administer as the Microsoft devotees would like one to think.

Date: Mon Mar 4 11:40:25 PST 1996

• NT is very well received among users who were using Win31 machines These are users who are using applications like spreadsheets, word processors, etc
• NT is not as well received among programmers and technical users. However, all these users are longtime Unix users
• The main strength of NT (and Microsoft OSes) in general over Unix is their concentration on the user interface. The GUI interfaces on Unix stink. The main strength of Unix is that it is more open, has been around much longer and thus is more mature.

Date: Mon Mar 4 12:05:23 PST 1996

Difficult to install, impossible to reconfigure. Fairly easy to use as a desktop system, much more complex as a server.

Date: Mon Mar 4 12:44:21 PST 1996

I am _NOT_ a member of the campus Info.Sys.; nor do they allow me to attend their planning/oversite meetings. I do hear from them. IS has an NT 3.51 server running -for IS access only. NT servers will replace the 15 BANYAN/VINES servers eventually. They also have a 5-user Novell 4.1 which is being used by a single lab here in the hospital. They definitely have chosen NT over Novell and Banyan. They are not yet comfortable with NT management. They will have a long delay writting the cutom login etc and migration of installed apps.

Date: Mon Mar 4 13:51:13 PST 1996

Given Microsoft's aggressive pricing and NT's features, I'm learning it.

Date: Mon Mar 4 14:13:56 PST 1996

Well received but doubts about it's current ability to replace primary corporate servers (NetWare). Perhaps NT 4.0 will change that... Platform of choice for development

Date: Mon Mar 4 14:19:21 PST 1996

The greatest pain has been dealing with the network dependencies when using a NFS and all of the related password issues. For example, in order for me to be able to mount an NFS drive on my NT computer, I need to have the same password on my NT computer, my Unix computer and the Unix computer I am using as authentication server. NT is also very susceptable(sp) to the slightest flaw in the hardware it is running on. A number of computers running NT repeatedly crashed.

Date: Mon Mar 4 14:25:47 PST 1996

Moderately well recieved. Bad security holes and many , many hardware compatibility/driver problems. Limited software avaliable. Some reliability problems. No support form Microsoft.

Date: Mon Mar 4 14:58:15 PST 1996

We are currently evaluating NT for Dept. servers and some power users workstations. So far NT has been very satisfied in terms of steability. However, it requires too much memory as an workstaion not like win95 and Windows.

Date: Mon Mar 4 15:10:06 PST 1996

Windows NT is a fairly tight server package. Our company is currently using a Windows NT based server solely as a database server with intentions of an Internet server in the near future. One of the largest considerations when deciding on NT was the price of the hardware and software required to run a usable system. If I had the choice, I would've opted for a Unix (either Intel- or Sun-based).

Date: Mon Mar 4 16:09:08 PST 1996

NT web servers at Microsoft appear to be slow.

Date: Mon Mar 4 20:38:10 PST 1996

We use NT as out Notes server platform and a couple of other little things. Our Novell people think that it will eventually mature and replace Netware. Our Unix people think that it will replace Unix to a large degree, and our users think that we're idiots for not using it now. I think that in 3-5 years it will be the dominant NOS but I still hate Microsoft.

Date: Tue Mar 5 00:23:52 PST 1996

NT has a fine GUI that covers all of the bugs that reside in the Kernel. It makes NT look very powerful next to Unix, as everything that the operating system offers could easily be found by the point-and-click method rather than reading through a pile of books. The above approach works fine with inexperienced system administrator, but fails with the developers. Microsoft boast that NT is the latest technology, when we know that the technology has been around for decades. I think NT is easy to use, but rather limited in its tasks, especially since Microsoft tend not to comply with the RFC's. It is like

Date: Tue Mar 5 01:40:05 PST 1996

Mixed, but getting easier and less expensive to run all the time.

Date: Tue Mar 5 05:20:12 PST 1996

We have a couple of projects on the go that are using NT. It has been a bit of a nuisance integrating it with our Solaris machines. We see it simply as a better Windows client. 32 bit, multitasking. We have not yet been able to see any advantage as a server. Our Solaris machines are much more flexible, and a lot more economical. It seems everyone in the Windows world, when they hear "server" thinks only of what I would call a file server, not a compute server. NT does not seem to be able to support 15-20 or more users logged on to it to work at their job.

Date: Tue Mar 5 05:31:51 PST 1996

Fairly good feelings, but too resource hungry. It's easier to manage than Novell & Unix (for low level users) On the downside the registry is too cumbersone and very very poor scripting capabilities

Date: Tue Mar 5 06:12:11 PST 1996

I've just tried 3.5 as a Web server (on august/95), but gave up to Solaris X.86. I intend to try NT as a file server to PCs running Windows in replacement to PC/NFS on Solaris X.86.

Date: Tue Mar 5 06:55:34 PST 1996

Much more useable and mature than Win95

Date: Tue Mar 5 11:38:13 PST 1996

NT simply works. It is not as scaleable (yet) or robust (yet) as Unix, but it is damn close. It requires far less system administration and support than Unix, so it is much less expensive than Unix, not only to purchase but to support. Our users all know Windows 3.1, so they have moved with incredible ease to NT. Even our Unix programmers use NT as their primary "general purpose" (e-mail, word processing, Lotus Notes) desktop.

Date: Tue Mar 5 12:52:09 PST 1996

NT 3.51 has been a stable network operating system for us. We have moved from Novell to NT because the cost per connection is substantially cheaper and the knowledge based needed to effectivily administer the system is much less. NT verse Unix, on the desktop, brings a much cheaper and more extensive set of tools. IT's very simple to attach to tcp or SPX under NT, this makes it a nice pivot point for moving files between OS's.

Date: Tue Mar 5 14:14:29 PST 1996

NT (as an option) is being requested by more and more customers. It may also have some applicability to us as a desktop OS running personal productivity apps and x-server software to allow connectivity to our Unix workstations and servers.

Date: Tue Mar 5 14:31:18 PST 1996

Too many things are hidden by Microsoft such that when an error occurs it is harder to figure out what's wrong with NT.

Date: Tue Mar 5 14:36:38 PST 1996

NT is well-received. It is somewhat easier to use than Unix, at the start. However, more complex tasks frequently become more difficult with NT, once one gets past the capabilities of the basic GUI admin interface of NT. NT is easy to integrate, so long as you only integrate it with Microsoft products. It is, however, easier to integrate into NetWare environments than Unix - even including UnixWare (R.I.P.)

Date: Tue Mar 5 15:32:28 PST 1996

In our lab, we run a small (7 Intel workstations) peer-to-peer NT network, within a much larger networked environment dominated by Sun and DEC workstations. These machines are used for a diverse mix of purposes ranging from C/C++ development for engineering caclulations and data acquisition, to running shrink-wrap applications such as Word, Excel, and Mathcad. One machine functions as the lab web server, running the EMWAC HTTPS on NT Server 3.51. Our experience: - NT is very easy to manage, probably easier than Unix for a technical professional who is not a full- time system manager. - NT is very robust. T

Date: Tue Mar 5 20:18:14 PST 1996

Excellent solution for Novell shops or greenfield installations. Also great for former IBM AS/400 captives. Easy to Learn & Teach basics Customer self sufficiency is greatly enhanced. In high demand by corporate middle class Market driven by Microsoft Office.

Date: Tue Mar 5 21:11:39 PST 1996

good as a desktop environment, clunky as a server, ok as an application server

Date: Tue Mar 5 21:37:50 PST 1996

Some local boneheads seem to think that NT is Great And Wonderful(tm) without even realizing that we Unix hacks have been using the Cool New Features(tm) since the early 1980s. I refuse to use it (or any other MicroSnot operating system) for ethical reasons :-)

Date: Wed Mar 6 01:46:05 PST 1996

avoiding so far...I'll wait until the hype settles down and when there is an overwhelming advantage that only NT provides. How much of the marketing hype will result in a self fulfilling prophecy? (OK, thats what marketing is all about...but still.) The one thing I like about W/NT is the consolidating effect it has had on the Unix vendors.

Date: Wed Mar 6 06:03:44 PST 1996

Currently I'm not impressed by the scalabilty, in performance terms of NT, as we have experiance, in a realtime enviroment, performance issues (losing updates, slow response etc). The only really effects our power users, but these are the people who would usually use Unix. NT really needs to get to grips with its processor scheduling if it is to replace Unix boxes, or remove its reliance on Intel's x86 arch (Open NT?). Front end is great and easy to use, but as I have said, you are limited it what you can do. I do like to flexible approch of Unix%

Date: Wed Mar 6 06:16:36 PST 1996

The PC folks here are beginning to investigate and use NT. I use it at home (just recently). It is obscure to a Unix user.

Date: Wed Mar 6 07:04:51 PST 1996

I am currently running nt side by side with Linux w/ X because I can't get root on the production systems(Solaris 2.5). I think nt is fantastic, kinda sucks because I would have liked writing an os like it. I think the 95 shell is garbage though. Yet, better than Windows in some ways. I think Unix is fantastic a command line os will always have a place in any serious programmer/sys admins life but MS will probably write up a Unix interface to NT.

Date: Wed Mar 6 19:45:39 PST 1996

NT Sucks. Feel free to quote me on that. NT is an excellent example of a downward spiral in the computer industry. Microsoft does well in the desktop environment (who hasn't seen Windows 3.1?) and therefore gains acceptance by the desktop user. Unix looks different, and NT "does the same thing". Microsoft has the name association advantage that IBM had in the mid to late 70's. The losers here are the application programmers who have to support two different code sets because Microsoft gives only face value to the POSIX standards that make Unix ports so easy.

Date: Thu Mar 7 06:18:27 PST 1996

We will not use NT until Microsoft forces us (like Windows 95 versions replacing Windows3.1 versions of MS Office forcing a switch to Windows 95)

Date: Thu Mar 7 05:20:00 PST 1996

Installation nothing short of a nightmare.

Date: Thu Mar 7 05:08:49 PST 1996

NT is used on a PC to run a daemon. It is only used at one site. While it is like Windows in appearence, it is very different underneath and seems to quite difficult to deal with.

Date: Thu Mar 7 08:27:46 PST 1996

Right now, NT server software is targeting Novell. NT comes with more, and integrates better with Unix. It can route over IP instead of IPX, giving you only one protocol to mess with on your routers. I can see small shops going all NT (desktop and server) to simplfy their lives. I can see large shops turning to NT from Novell because of cost. Microsoft owns the lion's share of the PC market and they have slotted Windows 95 to supplant Windows 3.x. In order to put a "Windows 95 compliant" sticker on your box, your software must run under Windows NT as well, or else MS won't let you put the sticker on. What this says to me is, Windows 95 is simply a vehicle being used to ween people off of Windows 3.x and that MS will drop Win95 like a rock when enough of the market is off of 3.x. All they have to do is stop selling Win95. The market will be left to buy NT or nothing, and all the Win95 applications will run under NT, so they will have no reason not to. Why bother with Windows 95, skip right to NT; that's where Microsoft is going to push you anyway. Most Unix vendors are already targeting Mainframes and are barely even fighting PCs encroaching onto the "low end" of their turf. The Unix that survives will be the Unix that meshes well with NT. I would much rather support standards, like X- Windows, NFS, Telnet, and FTP than I would support a company that I consider a monopoly.

Date: Thu Mar 7 10:56:40 PST 1996

NT application servers are not as stable as our Solaris 2.3 file and application servers. We have a very large deployment of server & client. It is currently up to 20 domestic and international sites. Most are Compaq, SPARC 20 and SPARC 1000 & SPARC 2000. There are more and more talks of replacing Solaris servers with NT servers. Since most of our desktops and workstations are Windows/Win95, as the result, I am seing a larger user (engineers & customers) base who are in fravior of implementing NT servers. My experiences so far is that the marriage between Solaris and Windows is a very difficult road.

Date: Thu Mar 7 12:08:00 PST 1996

NT is fine for the desktop and LAN environments, but it is a VERY weak product for the WAN and internet environments !!! Here is a partial list administration is extremely difficult if not impossible

• No SMTP or POP internet mail support
• No DNS name server support (as of this moment)
• Have to reboot after almost every little configuration change
• No telnet server
• No snmp client
• rcp/rcmd can only be initiated from NT.
• No UUCP support
• very weak command shell (it only supports dos commands plus a few other commands)

And the list just keeps going on and on....

Date: Thu Mar 7 13:13:04 PST 1996

Exposure to NT is limited to a few people at our site. One manager is pushing very hard to replace Novell servers with NT servers. Administration and security seems to be much simpler with NT than with with Novell. The GUI interface seems to shorten the learning curve, however overall maintenance and production capabilities are yet to be determined.

Date: Thu Mar 7 18:13:09 PST 1996

Haven't gotten around to really poking it yet.

Date: Thu Mar 7 22:43:25 PST 1996

NT has not been well received at our site. We are probably going to start evaluating the RISC Server next month.

Date: Fri Mar 8 03:05:49 PST 1996

Easy to install and use, but missing a lot of tools I have come to rely on on Unix Boxes

Date: Fri Mar 8 10:04:18 PST 1996

NT is an ecxellent product. Very easey to use compare to Unix systems. Easy to learn, especially for someone who has Windows background.

Date: Fri Mar 8 17:57:32 PST 1996

NT has been selected for our sever and development platform. This is a Windows shop which have used Sun servers in the past. Many people don't like Unix (Mostly from a poorly integrated system) so find NT just like Windows with more features.

Date: Fri Mar 8 20:24:58 PST 1996

NT is a good replacement for Windows 3.1 on the desktop, so long as you have all the NT drivers you require. NT on the server is easy to set up, and fairly reliable. The downfalls of NT are Microsoft's reluctance to support NT as a production, mission critical OS. Although that is not as important on the desktop side, it is vital to the server side of the house. In addition, NT is missing the customization that Unix allows, and other Unix-like features such as X Window System. X Window System is vital to remote- administration and help-desks. It also provides the user the ability to run programs where they are best suited, such as a bandwidth hungry GIS application nearest the server, not across an entire LAN, or WAN. I would like to see a fully object oriented OS, that allows the feature customization of Unix (i.e., the ability to use the modules that you prefer), without the overhead of the legacy, text-file based, cryptic- coded administration that goes with Unix. In short, NT is too simple- minded, and Unix is too complex. A middle ground needs to be obtained.

Date: Sat Mar 9 19:35:36 PST 1996

The easy things are very easy. But when it comes to problems or trying to really get into performance tuning forget it. It is closed and no one is talking about the problems.

Date: Sat Mar 9 20:30:09 PST 1996

NT is being eveluated within our department as a desktop/fileserver/ printserver. As far as these tasks go, it seems to perform adequately. The main complaint as a fileserver is that it DOES NOT do NFS.This is a real pain when integrating it into a Unix environment. I find it to be a memory hog. Our Sun classic file and print serves 30 PCs adequately with only 24MB RAM, while NT struggles unless it has 32. Lack of a good SMTP component (bundled) makes it fairly useless as an internet mail server. I fundamentally don't buy the concept as NT, except as a high end desktop machine. A "server" shouldn't be wasting its time running a graphics based console, and administrators HATE not being able to do "quick fixes" with a script, or shell based utility. Microsoft assumes that they have thought of (and provided an appropriate button for) every single thing one could possible do on its server. In summary, NT as a server: why graphics?, No NFS or SMTP. NT as a desktop: superior to win95

Date: Sat Mar 9 20:44:15 PST 1996

Department supports engineering users. Engineering users tend to look at initial acquisition costs. INTEL RULES on this basis unless RISC processors have substantial performance advantage. NT gives INTEL big assist in this area by providing OS that multitasks and exploits PentiumPRO horsepower. NT is very well received at our site. Most MIS people are assuming that it will be the logical client/server choice for the future. For the client side, MS Windows (and NT) provide all the cheap productivity tools (Word, Excel, GroupWise) that any office worker could want plus the GUI is widely known. Many technical users have PC's at home. On server side, strengths are less obvious, but people tend to pick it because of high comfort level with MS Windows clients. Unless the facts make it ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS that it is the wrong choice, it gets the nod. I installed NT on my PC and have to say that as a client system, I like it a lot better than the DOS/Windows world. The integrated IP support was very nice. It was vary easy to install application software and it seemed to run pretty well. As a server, file sharing was pretty easy. The mechanism for establishing and managing user profiles was obtuse. In addition, some of the security mechanisms were somewhat primitive (like no obvious way to change file ownership). At this point, I'd have to say that Unix is perceived as difficult to learn and use.

Date: Sat Mar 9 23:52:48 PST 1996

NT has work very well for us. NT is very well designed in very aspect (except the stupid drive letters limitation) The world need a new, robust OS. NT, IMHO, is it. I am sick of dealing with all these slightly different, "open" Unix's. And this is adminstering and using them. I am even sicker about all those high priced, stone age development tools.

Date: Sun Mar 10 06:57:23 PST 1996

In the fewest words, the users are sold (marketing bs helps) technical staff (The dosians) love it, (The Novellians) are mixed, and (The Unixians) say "where's the beef. Notwithstanding the personal biases, NT will more than likely take over the PC LAN server market. It will hurt mostly Novell, Banyan etc. Sun can prevent an erosion of their low end market by providing a very simple.

Date: Sun Mar 10 13:54:37 PST 1996

NT is the best on reliability price performance, Unix is to expensive for the Desktop or small Servers.

Date: Mon Mar 11 08:22:34 PST 1996

NT is currently not being received very well. Most of the objections relate to the lack of a Win95 interface and the difficulty in obtaining drivers. We are currently looking at the NT4.0 release as a solution for the first objection. The second is going to simply take time. There are several additional problem areas that we see. First NT does not support a rooted file system. This limites the number of mount points and makes it difficult for users to access data on many different drives. This comes from the designers VMS bias and is unfortunate in our view point. Second, the lack of softlinks makes support much more difficult than it shoud be. Third, the inability to su to become another user and still use the standard tools is a problem. This drastically slows down problem solving since I can't be logged in as 2 users at the same time. Fourth, the dependance of the system on netbios is unfortunate since it limits the ways that we can deploy remote machine across routers. I understand that this will be fixed in a fucutre release, but it can't come soon enough. Lastly, NT is still a single user system. Until the standard desktop becomes multiuser, it will be very difficult to integrate into an enviroment where CPU sharing is a standard procedure.

Date: Mon Mar 11 09:43:47 PST 1996

Still some concerns about scalability. We're using Windows NT with SQL Server. It's been fairly easy to learn and has integrated into our NetWare environment well.

Date: Mon Mar 11 09:49:42 PST 1996

We use NT in our imaging lab for its greater speed at running Windows 3.x software such as Adobe Photoshop. This setup is about 1 year old and has worked well. The only exits from NT to DOS/Windows is due to lack of specific drivers for specialized hardware.

Date: Mon Mar 11 17:25:48 PST 1996

Needs a lot of resources. Does not scale well.

Date: Mon Mar 11 20:49:49 PST 1996

NT is easy to use. I use NT as a file server.Because it is very east to use from File Manager on Windows-NT(Workstation) and Windows95. But we can't log on to NT-Server like telnet/rlogin. Most of Client PC is not so powerfull machine. Then we sometimes would like to use NT-Server's Powerfull CPU. But we can't. we user NT server as a just file server.

Date: Mon Mar 11 23:41:38 PST 1996

No experience with NT.

Date: Tue Mar 12 06:46:53 PST 1996

We have beta copies that we have been playing with. There has been NO specific requests for NT at all from our customer base. Our customer base is primarily mainframe oriented.

Date: Tue Mar 12 06:51:59 PST 1996

We're just now attempting to implement NT. We view it as a necessary bridge between our Unix environment and the software other agencies (we're the federal government) have written for our use, but not for Unix. It's not necessarily harder, just different.

Date: Tue Mar 12 08:12:51 PST 1996

slowwwwwww!

Date: Tue Mar 12 09:52:58 PST 1996

NT is still based on NETBIOS which means that it must be force-fit to work as an enterprise wide network. "Force-fit" means that many operations depend upon WINS to translate NETBIOS names into IP addresses. NT is far less flexible than Unix. (At least former Unix implementations.) The sysadmin cannot as easily write scripts or C programs to make his/her life easier. These functions typically must be bought from third party vendors. NT seems to be much less expensive to own and operate than Unix. This is true in hardware, software, administration time, and user effort. NT workstation (on the INTEL platform) allows a user to do both resource intensive work (CAD, simulations, etc.) and regular PC productivity work on one machine. This can be much less expensive than having both Unix and PC computers. Especially since the user must only learn one operating system. NT comes with enough glue (TCP/IP, IPX, NETBEUI, Netware, etc.) to fit into almost any existing network. Once there, its user popularity will determine if it becomes dominant or not. If Mr. Gates would provide native TCP/IP networking and NFS support, I would recommend it to everyone for everything.

Date: Tue Mar 12 10:54:57 PST 1996

none

Date: Tue Mar 12 23:41:04 PST 1996

Though integrating our Macintoshes with NT Server has been discussed, we trust Sun products over Microsoft products anyday. We do wish Apple had chosen a Sun OS for its Network Servers.

Date: Wed Mar 13 13:30:01 PST 1996

They simply love with-out any logical reason

Date: Wed Mar 13 15:48:19 PST 1996

Except for a few problems, NT has been very easily integrated into our Win95/MacOS dominated network. It is also allowing us to integrate with a larger campus-wide AFS network, and will make the transition to DCE much easier.

Date: Thu Mar 14 10:19:53 PST 1996

I hate NT, but I am learning it, because we are going to be forced to start using it.

Date: Thu Mar 14 13:15:15 PST 1996

I work two jobs. One as a system administrator for a small university and another as a WebPage designer for a large engineering corporation. We decied to use Unix at the University. However, I feel that the ease of operation and publishing makes NT the server of choice for WebServers. Let's face it, most non-technical people are just plain scared silly by Unix -- with good reason. One false move and you're dead in the water. Windows NT is much more forgiving, but it doesn't sacrifice too much power to its fault tolerance. Sure Unix is faster. Unix will probably always be faster. However, fact is fact, Unix is difficult. NT has it's degree of difficulty -- But it's nothing like Unix.

Date: Thu Mar 14 21:58:18 PST 1996

We found NT very robust and easy to use. We can do all development and documentation in one platform, instead of a few monitors sitting on the desk. The networking support of Windows NT is also very easy to use. You just go into the file manager and you can see everying on the network. The only reason some of our department is still owning some Unix workstation is our cad software don't run on Windows NT yet.

Date: Fri Mar 15 05:37:00 PST 1996

We have a NT domain server, possibly three Netware LAN with WFW (clients) front-ends. Each of these are an island in itself. The NT does not talk to the other LANs. The state of affairs seems to have been around for a few years already. Easy to use, almost the same as WFW. The new W95 interface when released is going to prove a bit clunky. Won't think that there will be any major trouble with users. On the other hand, there is a Win95 experimental server which well, is probably being thinkered on by ...various academics and possibly research students, at the university, in the Mathematics dept. * NT & W95 is not hard to learn compared to Unix. * I would however feel that NT will be hard in the hands of inexperienced professionals, who only know how to preach and rarely implement what they teach. NT would probably be well received at my site if implemented. The Netware servers are unlikely to be displaced. It will just be a mix environment. (Most of these are assumptions about the university's plans and in any case won't contribute any marks to my course....)

Date: Fri Mar 15 11:35:38 PST 1996

NT is easy to use and easy to learn at the user side. At the system administrator side, NT is hard to manage, beyond his very small windowing administration.

Date: Fri Mar 15 10:11:56 PST 1996

Yes, NT is well received by our IT department, but they lack the need for high end computing devices since these are managed by ourselves (scientists). ====They are ignorant about Unix!!! NT is rather easy to use but not much easier than Solaris. The user account management on NT however lacks good tools! (Better with Solaris) Overall, I think the difference between NT and Unix is rather small. The biggest threat to Unix is to my opinion the very cheap hardware compared to Unix vendors hardware.

Date: Mon Mar 18 08:53:11 PST 1996

NT is used widely in our company and our department. It is very robust and can integrate with some ease (although there is loss of funcionality) with the other operating environments we use. Because most of our users have had some experience with Windows 3.x the transition for those now using NT is somewhat easy. I like NT very much both for its strength and ease of use. I would, however like to see it adopt other standards such as NFS as part of the core operating system. I believe an improvement like that would give the Unix world a run for their money.

Date: Sun Mar 17 13:56:41 PST 1996

One systems manager likes DOS, the other Windows NT. I like Unix but what do they care??!

Date: Sat Mar 16 04:43:40 PST 1996

Extreme easy to use, setup, get started with. No real difficulties to integrate with the already installed base of Unix servers. The power of NT is in the price/performance. All "heavy duty" systems are today designed and written on Sun Solaris, but the end user tools have taken a turn the last year. We now see more and more demand of Win32-versions. The organization is also taking action start porting tools to Win32. More than 50% of the new projects will most certainly be Win32 first. Then maybe Solaris. Again The power of NT is in the price/performance. The price picture of Solaris systems (workstations and dev- & user-tools) is not competitive to Win32-tools (Microsoft Visual C++, SourceSafe, MicroSoft Office).

Date: Mon Mar 18 11:33:59 PST 1996

implementation and training is a joke. domains are not set up correctly, the support group does not know what is't doing even after obtaining MS NT cert.

Date: Mon Mar 18 17:19:48 PST 1996

NT has been bought into by less technical management as an enterprise network server solution. Having worked with NT for the last 18 months I have my serious doubts that NT can deliver the robustness and reliability that Unix has proven to deliver. The fact that there are different flavors of Unix to choose from means that Unix will continue to improve and expand in capabilities and applications. Competition is good for industry. When one company calls all the shots, there is no incentive to improve price or performance. The fact that NT is moving agressively toward supporting Unix APIs should be a wakeup call to IT organizations that are betting the farm on NT. NT is simpler to learn than Unix. The problem is that it is deceptively simple. When problems arise, the tools to debug and resolve are not there. As far as integration is concerned, the lack of third party support is quite glaring.

Date: Mon Mar 18 17:24:08 PST 1996

In the process of integrating NT into organization.

Date: Mon Mar 18 17:24:40 PST 1996

In the process of integrating NT into organization.

Date: Mon Mar 18 22:30:23 PST 1996

NT is easy to use when the apps are specifically written for NT.

Date: Tue Mar 19 07:30:57 PST 1996

N.T. has fit well into our organization but still lacks the robustness of Unix

Date: Tue Mar 19 08:57:19 PST 1996

NT is far easier to install and administer than Solaris. Part of this is the installation process itself, but a large part is also because users find NT easier to use than Unix. That means they don't have to come to me (SA) as frequently. I think Unix will be forced into higher-end capacities as NT takes over more and more of the desktop and low to mid level server business. We have 15 workstations (SPARC 5) and 1 server (SC1000) at our site, which we set up about 15 months ago. If we were doing it *now*, we'd probably set up 15 NT P5 133s and 1 SC1000.

Date: Tue Mar 19 13:01:58 PST 1996

We moved to Windows NT because of our Client/Server Business system. We also have 50 Windows NT users. Most are Graphic artists, and Business systems users. Some learning curve dealing with file systems security under Windows NT. It made any problems I had with Unix security in the past look like a walk in the park. But it is under control now. I have found it to be an excellent OS overall for the PC market. The stability is excellent. The applications which are designed for NT really perform. You need to be willing to invest in powerful hardware to get the most from NT. The interface duplicates that of Windows 3.x, especially Workgroups. Anyone not used to Windows will find most of the same Windows quirks. I believe that in a couple of years, NT will sit along side Unix-based OSes as a competent, powerful platform. NT definitely has the advantage of the large Windows installed base.

Date: Tue Mar 19 15:08:38 PST 1996

Investigating using NT as a replacement for our AppleShare Server. Ideally we want a workgroup server that can support AppleShare, NFS, and IPX. We have an NT system in house as an Oracle server, but it is a development system only--not on-line. Next Year we will likely upgrade our NetWare 3.12 servers... to NetWare 4.x? NT? other? NT looks like it can be a powerful server/network system, but it looks like there are some complicated issues involved in understanding how you want to set up NT Domains for your network.

Date: Tue Mar 19 16:42:31 PST 1996

NT has promise, but needs much improvement in several key areas. 1) Get rid of that Progman Interface! 2) Managing a large network of MS networking computers is a pain. NT needs something like NDS (why not license it?) that will allow centralized user management of a single tree. Until then, managing NT domains is too cumbersome and expensive for large corporations. 3) NT is too slow when used as a simple file and print server when compared to Netware. The vast majority of services from servers are still file and print related, and until NT can match Netware's power, scalability, and economy in these areas, it won't be a good bargain. 4) It makes a good application server, but I wouldn't use it as a file server for *anything* except a small workgroup. 5) NT, while promising, is not as mature and ready to run applications as Netware. NT's greatest strength is when compared to Unix as an application server. 6) When are we going to see 64-bit NT?

Date: Tue Mar 19 19:09:20 PST 1996

Our shop is mostly SunOS based, with development starting to shift to PCs. Our PC developers are using NT as a development platform, and find it very stable and largely bug-free. We use Samba on a couple of our Sun servers to make them available as file servers (as an alternative to PC-NFS or a similar product). For those of us doing PC development, we have pretty much moved off our Suns. We have a PC X-server for those "legacy" apps we still need to run. And of course, we have a plethora of Windows apps: Word, Excel (finally, a REAL spreadsheet), Lotus Notes (the Sun version is such a pig!), etc. I imagine that over time we'll move some of our Sybase servers to either Sybase for NT or MS SQL Server. And I would imagine that product development will slowly shift towards NT, also. I think we'll still have Unix around for many years, but it won't be the "leading edge" that it used to be.

Date: Tue Mar 19 19:46:02 PST 1996

NT seems to be a good edition to a somewhat heterogenous crowd of users. Some on our site use DOS/Windows, some use Windows 95, and others are using different flavors of Unix. NT is definitely the best non-Unix OS available hands down.

Date: Wed Mar 20 00:34:36 PST 1996

NT certainly has a place. The modular design and kernal protection, although causing a performance hit, are evolutionary, robust and flexible. And it's a lot easier to learn. In item #5, although I don't think NT will supplant Unix, I do think it will augment it in many applications. And hell, you can plug a Unix OS into NT! In addition, I think the muliple flavors of Unix _are_ both a strenght and weakness. A strenght in the sense variation in developement can lead to innovation and robustness. A weakness due to fragmentation of the market and a multitude of "standards". Open Systems? Microsoft is as least as open as Sun. More so, really. Consider the architectures Sun supports...Sun, and Intel (sort of). How about HP, DEC, or even SCO? NT runs on Intel, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC. There are obvious reasons for this of course. How many NT applications are being ported to Sun vs Sun applications to NT?

Date: Wed Mar 20 01:56:46 PST 1996

Easy to integrate using NFS. Users get access to programs such as Excel, although we do not find version 7 very stable on NT 3.51. NT has the sort of user interface that makes less experienced system administrators more comfortable, compared to Solaris. Out of a staff of 40 people we have four people using NT. However, they can be found on the Sun box's as frequently as they are on the NT workstations.

Date: Wed Mar 20 11:31:13 PST 1996

NT is overall pretty easy to roll out, however it is far less functional in a distributed setting than Unix. Too much about NT requires that support people physically visit the desktop. The support tools provided with the OS are extremely primitive. For instance, the log viewer can display only one log message at a time, and there's no way to print the log out from the application. On Unix, of course, there is no log viewer, however it's easy to access and print any system's log files remotely. On NT, the log files are not accessable from a DOS box - even if remote access were available, you couldn't reasonably display log messages. NT can integrate with other OSes on the network (we use SAMBA extensively for serving home directories) however many NT standards fly in the face of reasonable integration. * The mail reader, for instance, uses a proprietary protocol instead of PPP (on the client) or SMTP (on the server). As a result, storing and delivering e-mail to NT-only users has never worked very well, and definitely not as well as Unix-based clients and servers. * NT provides both direct network access to network drives using UNC, and the virtual drive indicators (C:, D:, etc.) yet both methods don't integrate well for many of our users. We're always getting conflicts between volumes mapped to virtual drives and UNC access.

Date: Wed Mar 20 11:42:49 PST 1996

It has been a good experience working with NT. Our organization lacks of good Unix administrators, so it has been a good solution for us to use NT servers. We're planning to review beta Release 4.

Date: Wed Mar 20 12:55:25 PST 1996

People are hot to learn it. In a couple of years it may be in a position to push Unix off the shelf.

Date: Wed Mar 20 16:36:56 PST 1996

Realiable and yet poorly-appreciated

Date: Wed Mar 20 18:46:53 PST 1996

In my department, we use both NT workstation and NT server. But I do not administrate NT server. I'm using NT workstation and administrate it as a local administrator. From my experience, I think NT is not easy to use, not reliable still now. File system is complicated, registry is much more complicated, and NT system was stopped twice in our usual operation. Of courese some of NT's functions are convenient, if we can use those. (Because it is diffucult to use NT's funcions.) But it does not mean NT is bad nor useless, because Unix is difficult for most of people. I think NT is best for serving filesystems and applications for Windows PC. The reason why we use NT is that we use Windows.

Date: Wed Mar 20 18:46:59 PST 1996

From conversations I have had with others it appears that : * NT has good basic standalone features. * The Networking and Enterprise features are unproven and no-one seems to have any real experience/recommendations for large scale deployment. Within our organization (>40,000 users, multiple distinct departments) NT has been mandated as the standard desktop. So far, I have heard nothing to indicated that sufficient functionality, applications and tools are available under NT to allow it to replace our network management infrastructure.

Date: Wed Mar 20 19:31:11 PST 1996

1. Yes. 2. NT is easy to use than Unix. 3. NT is not a real good OS for Internet information service. 4. For LAN, NT is better than Unix, but worst than Novell.

Date: Wed Mar 20 19:41:12 PST 1996

It's easy to use, but the command-line tools are (expletive deleted) compared w/Unix. This alone makes me prefer Unix as a desktop OS. However, the availability of desktop apps is better in NT. All my printers are PostScript, so Unix and NT both support them well. I wish companies such as WordPerfect would release more portable versions of their Unix apps that run on diverse OSes like FreeBSD that are not as commercially well-known, but better systems than Solaris or BSDI for individual desktop use.

Date: Wed Mar 20 22:08:31 PST 1996

We just started up to replace all OS/2 servers with Windows NT. We are working in the financial market where Windows NT as a client seems to become a standard. On the server side however, Windows NT is only used for OA. The programm we have to deliver OA to every of our 25,000 users is not well underway. NT shows up to be troublesome and not scalable. But since critical applications are using Solaris servers, the influence on business is not so critical.

Date: Wed Mar 20 23:33:43 PST 1996

It is an excellent operating system that is very much needed these days. It is simpler to learn. It has very rich features which you don't find in Unix. It is becoming de-facto standard server for C/S applications. It is very stable and is also secure.(There are no sendmail bugs here.) Would like to see Windows NT being accepted worldwide and it will succeed.

Date: Thu Mar 21 01:02:33 PST 1996

I came into networks while working as an IBM mainframe programer. I had one of our first PCs with an IRMA board and had responsabilty for providing our mainframe application data to clients using PC applications such as Lotus. We progress to Netware 2.15 and SNA Gateways and so forth... We now have over 150 Novell serves on our 'IntraNet' which is connected to the Internet along with hosts such as an IBM ES9000,large Tandem, and HP. Along with AS400s, Vaxs, and a slew of sundry Unix hosts(even some SUN boxes). I still have responsabilties that include making mainframe data available to our clients along with supporting two Novell servers, two NT servers, and 20 Intel based workstations running a mostly Win95 with several WFW machines that are used for training and two NT Workstation machines. We brought up the NT servers as database serves to investigate client server computing and data warehousing. We now have over 3 million records online and availble to our clients desktops in a little under a year's worth of part time work by two programers, a functional analyst, and a manager. And we have spent less then $15,000 on hardware. NT installs as easy as Windows 3.1 and SQL Server like a desktop application. I would say our introduction to NT was positive, especally when the same data warehouse project was bid at $150,000 by a competing application group to share their SPARC server.

Date: Thu Mar 21 01:30:12 PST 1996

used for small SQL Server applications, affordable, easy to install, no maintenance, easy merged into Windows environment

Date: Thu Mar 21 03:17:14 PST 1996

After numerous attempts and massive hype NT seems to be maturing into a relatively solid departmental server. Currently it is severely lacking at the enterprise level and probably will for some time to come...

Date: Thu Mar 21 05:19:16 PST 1996

NT is pretty useless compared to Solaris, HOWEVER, Sun had better get act together and agressivley push Solaris for x86 desktop. Sun should start with it's pricing strategy, give the damn software away for free (or for the cost of the distribution), none of this $600/seat, (before discount) Sun needs market share on the desktop, and this is the only way to get it...

Date: Thu Mar 21 05:37:09 PST 1996

We do not have NT installed at our site, but have begun to consider it due to its anticipated widespread use in Industry. As an educational institution, we are obliged to teach using the predominant environment for a given field, and currently, Unix is the preferred OS in the research we do.

Date: Thu Mar 21 06:00:16 PST 1996

It is well received by users because it is like Windows. I find it very easy to use and administer despite having a Unix background. The lack of built in NFS support is the only real integration problem we have had. I think NT with a 95 GUI could be the a definitive relase if it is as stable as the current version of NT.

Date: Thu Mar 21 06:52:14 PST 1996

[Do not attribute these comments, please] Relatively trouble-free. A little tiresome as a MS OS since it doesn't support all MS-DOS programs, but stable. Some aspects of systems programming are not as well exposed by MS as they might be, which can hinder development of low-level or high- performance apps. Administration is reasonably straight-forward. I'm beta'ing NT 4.0, and (hate to say that) I love it. If only Unix (my home territory) had such a professional and responsive GUI. NT4 is adaptable without needing to understand the minutiae of every type of config file.

Date: Thu Mar 21 07:01:28 PST 1996

We have evaluated NCD's Wincenter Pro as a mechanism for deploying Windows applications to our 150+ X terminals. We will purchase either Wincenter Pro, Insignia's NTrigue, or Connecsoft's X Connection. Unfortunately, they're not cheap! Easy to use: yes. Troublesome: it's probably not at stable as Solaris. A breeze to integrate: hell no! There's no NIS/NIS+ client support, no disk quotas, no NFS, no bootpd/tftpd. Some of these are available from 3rd party, but IMHO Micro$oft needs to bundle them. Hard to learn: somewhat. Buy a good book (no recommendations yet), read it cover to cover, and go play.

Date: Thu Mar 21 07:26:31 PST 1996

Thanks for the chance to comment. Ours is weird environment, because it's sort of a split shop. There are maybe 100-150 Unix and 700-800 PC's (and a few Macs). All of the PC's and Macs use Banyan servers (a Unix derivative) for mail, etc. The NT, if they switch, would replace Banyan and DOS/Windows, but probably (hopefully) not the Suns. I'm not sure why they're so keen on it, since Banyan's a great OS for a large org, but they want to. Despite the fact that it sounds like there are big problems with NT, many people here are excited about it. I haven't actually used it, though, so I don't know the answer to many of your questions. The thing that scares me the most is that it has all of these services available, and no one knows anything about the security (holes!) on the platform. Used to be we didn't have to worry much about "the PC side" compromising our security!

Date: Thu Mar 21 08:30:23 PST 1996

I have been using NT for about 4 years now. NT was not truely read for production until 3.51 was released. I feel it is right on the line of being just stable enough for mission critical applications. Everyone loves NT except for people using Solaris or HP Unix... NT can be setup by anyone, but not setup correctly unless a lot of time is spent understanding the big picture and taking time to build a proper domain/security model. My biggest complaints about NT is the lack of USEFULL tech support(we ussually no more about NT then Microsoft's Techs.), and that it is as fare from open as you can get. My biggest complaints are about Microsoft in general and not NT...

Date: Thu Mar 21 09:32:23 PST 1996

Moving Unix (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) based product to NT. Much easier to setup than Unix. User interface better accepted than X Window System variants. No contest, really.

Date: Thu Mar 21 09:52:06 PST 1996

I love NT.. It's not perfect but, then what OS is??

Date: Thu Mar 21 10:04:26 PST 1996

About the only standard that our organization has is TCP/IP. NT has been fairly easy to integrate into a TCP/IP and Unix environment as supplementary servers or PC workstation operating system. However, the lack of ability to create common accounts with Unix systems is a major handicap to NT as a server OS. We are migrating from DEC Pathworks as a PC server, and NT has been easy to substitute for Pathworks. I look to a gradual replacement of DOS, Windows, and Windows 95 by NT as a desktop operating system, and for a lot of use of NT as a file/print server and as a Web server.

Date: Thu Mar 21 10:55:28 PST 1996

NT is the most stable Microsoft OS. It is a full 32 bit implementation. So it doesn't need the workarounds, external support to run 32 bit applications. In developing MS Windows products, NT appears to be the most robust in handling errors. Overall, NT is the best OS Microsoft has to offer. Although it has a loooong way to go, to get near a real OS like Unix.

Date: Thu Mar 21 12:02:37 PST 1996

MS is more than six months late in delivering a 10 user copy of NT v.3.51 for evaluation. Given their prediliction for over- promising and far under-delivering, I doubt NT will have the impact that MS is claiming. Come to think of it...has anything of MS' in the past 5 years had impact which lives up to its hype? The one time I did help a local college install an NT server setup, the installation went very smoothly. The problems came when the SysAdmin tried to get NT to conform to the realities which existed in that particular network. Much like Win95, which thinks nothing of reconfiguring itself to its' own satisfaction each time it starts... and locking out your modem or CD drive, NT got balky when we tried to explain just how one group of five users would be connecting to the NT server via an AS400. NT took the setup ok, but as soon as one of the users tried to connect, NT generated error messages indicating the "non-standard" gateway was not responding. It took several attempts and two or three downloads from MS to get things smoothed over.

Date: Thu Mar 21 12:22:44 PST 1996

Nt is better than Win95, but both are terrible at intercommunication, with other systems like Unix in particular. Win95 cannot access LAN, WinNT cannot get on MSN network!

Date: Thu Mar 21 16:39:41 PST 1996

NT seems to be an enourmously complicated software project with many design problems and software bugs. Microsoft's expensive per minute "help" is a serious disadvantage for many of my client's, especially given the size of the "knowledge base" problem file, which documents bugs which the owner of NT then has to pay for to discover is a bug and cannot be fixed!!! NT's performance is questionable with high-end PC (i.e., co- processed NICs)

Date: Thu Mar 21 20:45:49 PST 1996

NT is becoming the standard OS on all of our PC's and Portable units that are used for developing/production/demos. Many of the personell at this site are also talking of using NT on their home PC's.. With all the problems and bad publicity of Win95, there is a feeling that Win3.x is a poor OS and they must make a change to something more reliable--in this case that leaves NT or OS2warp. However with IBM's marketing abilities, it seems they will never be able to sell OS2 even if it really is better than any others on the market. Therefore NT is the best choice--also, NT is a 32-bit OS whereas there is a lot of question as to any other product meeting this criteria. Now that we are using NT, we find ourselves wondering why we did not use it sooner. Actually, we bought a version of NT at the company and no one would dare use it -- it sat for over a year before anyone installed it on a system. At this point it is the new wave in the OS area at our site. And I do not see that changing in the near future. Especially since there are becoming more programs available that allow 32-bit machines to talk to Unix without leaving a Windows session.

Date: Fri Mar 22 09:02:51 PST 1996

I've found NT fairly easy to setup and learn. It was easy to integrate into our library network. It is not as stable as I expected which makes me wary of using it as a server...

Date: Fri Mar 22 10:24:52 PST 1996

As a desktop OS we are going to migrate to it. As a server, the majority of our servers will stay on Unix. Compared to our Unix servers, I find NT too proprietary. I don't like having to buy all these add on products in order to get a server to do what I want (quotas, remote access, remote management, backup, access to full TCP/IP and NFS). Under NT I am limited to what NT provides or I buy. Under Unix I can write scripts and launch processes to do maintenance functions (watch disk space, watch processes, send reports via e-mail, send snmp traps).

Date: Fri Mar 22 12:28:03 PST 1996

NT has solved some problems with Windows 3.1, allowing multiple resource hogs to run at the same time. On the other hand, it brings along it's own set of problems, like software incompatibility, lack of device driver support for things like credit card readers, signature capture devices, etc. My desktop NT PC hangs at least once per week as I logout. Netware connectivity isn't perfect, when I change my password, I have to do it on Netware first, or else I get shut out of my fileserver connectivity. Microsoft continues to claim openness and conformance to standards, while at the same time making proprietary changes to them. PPP, for example. Every internet provider in the nation had to modify their systems to support Microsoft's non-standard PPP. Forget us that wouldn't mind connecting NT to Unix, no, we're not important to Microsoft. If they think we'll drop tried and true Unix for the next beta release of NT, they've got another think coming.

Date: Fri Mar 22 13:35:20 PST 1996

I've Been using NT since June of 94 and find it "Not as mature" as Unix, but certainly on the "right course". NT's inability to natively compete with X Window System functionality I see as one of it's biggest problems with competeing head to head with Unix. I increaseingly find it difficult to locate expertise on NT amongst my peers but that too should change in time. I find The Microsoft Certified Engineer program less than effective, and certainly more costly than it should be. I recognize that MS doesn't want to "rubber-stamp" "NT pretenders" But remember, the problem that MSCE addresses is in the previous paragraph.

Date: Fri Mar 22 19:19:36 PST 1996

I use Solaris at work and NT at home. I wish I could have on NT what I have on Solaris: 1. Open Windows. 2. Richness of shells which exist on Solaris. 3. Abundance of commands. 4. Emacs/VI editors. 5. Compatibility of X/GUI-Motif/Windows. 6. No DOS!!!! Until above is accomplished NT will not achieve its popularity. 1. Solaris must be competitive in price to NT. Until #1 is done, Solaris will not be open to all other people.

Date: Sat Mar 23 09:47:48 PST 1996

The best attributes of NT are it's ease of use for connecting DOS, Windows,and Mac's and it's ability to sufficently serve as both a file and application server. I don't see it overtaking Unix in the high-end or mission-critical markets. It will probably overtake Unix in the low-end application server market. I think Netware will continue to be the choice at most business for one reason, they already have so much invested in it, it doesn't make good business sense to switch totally for no real reason. NT appears to make a great low to mid traffic Web Server. It will find it's niche by eating a little away from Unix and a little away from Novell but not overtaking either of them. It is easy to learn and integrates well with Netware, but they could work on their Unix/Linux intergration a little more.

Date: Sat Mar 23 18:29:34 PST 1996

NT has demonstrated (once again) Microsoft's contempt for customers who care about reliability. Our experiences with NT show that it is simply not stable enough to use as as a 24-hour server -- it crashes too frequently. It is a fragile system. Furthermore, the way MS cooks benchmark numbers makes it impossible to evaluate its expected performance without expensive testing programs.

Date: Sun Mar 24 01:51:31 PST 1996

Very positive so far. Decision has been made to replace Apple file servers with WinNT. Desktops will almost certainly go WinNT as well, for ease of management and lower support costs. (Users can't destroy the system.) Main limitation is the difficulty of porting classic timesharing applications. As more apps move to client/server or TP-monitors, this will go away. We aren't about to move the business-critical customer apps to NT, but anything else, up to and including the finance system, is a candidate for migration. Main virtue is the freedon of choice of hardware vendors, and the excellant support coming from software vendors. Many s/w vendors are saying they will be dropping development of Unix versions in the next 1-2 years. We haven't hit many bugs, so far. Certainly no more than the average Unix release. Integration with the Solaris environment is a worry, but 90% of our servers will be Windows NT, so the other 10% better get compatible. Windows NT is easy enough to learn, once you shake off the Unix straightjacket and realize that htere are other ways to do things.

Date: Sun Mar 24 06:20:27 PST 1996

No synchronized directories. Trusted domains difficult to manage.

Date: Sun Mar 24 07:37:57 PST 1996

Our top two products are based on NT so our future rests with NT. However all of our "back room" servers are Sun/SunOS4 systems, and some desktops where performance is an issue. Windows/NT makes a cost effective desktop platform for software development and for some EE CAD applications when the NT desktop is augmented with an Xwindow server such as Hummingbird Exceed.

Date: Sun Mar 24 12:27:06 PST 1996

We tried to set up an NT server and had nothing but troubles. It is a half baked solution between the wretched Windows OS and Unix. People should use either Unix or a good desktop environment like MacOS.

Date: Sun Mar 24 22:35:29 PST 1996

NT is easy to use, but, a lot of difference in De-facto standard. For example, Microsoft TCP/IP is not same as we,Unix user use, and also DHCP functions. Yes, NT is well-received at our site. Becouse of easy use, and it's NOT for main server(Not so important, only use for test). The problem of NT is too easy to use. So many people make servers on small LAN, and it makes confusing of protocols or services(for example DNS or someting). Trouble has occurr on Microsoft's DOMAIN system. That is a big problem same as Windows 95 server function. NT Server is very familier to user, but no one understand, how to maintain and keep safe of the networks.

Date: Mon Mar 25 09:16:56 PST 1996

After working with OS/2 and trying to find hardware and software that would satisfy our customers requirements, Windows NT was really easy to setup and install.

Date: Mon Mar 25 09:32:32 PST 1996

We have migrated 4 million lines of Unix code to NT platform NT is relatively easy to use once we learned what is really going on. Most of our problems have been with troublesome hardware. We used NutCracker to ease the pain of transition which it did but at quite a cost in performance.

Date: Mon Mar 25 10:59:39 PST 1996

A year ago, NT was not well-received. Our Corporate Information Services headquarters was decidedly against NT as a standard OS within the company. However, as more plant sites began buying NT Servers, mostly due to costs, Corporate Information Services headquarters was forced to train individuals to support the plant systems or be "out-sourced". And the result is that our administrators are beginning to love NT. It is easy to install, easy to use, and easy to learn. However, it's the "re-bootinest" system that I have ever worked with, and often requires a lot of reloading during the beginning of your network layout. If you set it up wrong, you have to re-install the OS. However, installing is not hard. I happen to love Unix and am infatuated with NT. I see a lot of resemblance between the two. I predict that the two Operating Systems will look and act more alike as new releases are made public. Kinda looks like NT is nothing more than a new flavor of Unix.

Date: Mon Mar 25 11:21:09 PST 1996

Ms-mail Post-office installed on server + usage as file-server. User- friendly in administrating if it works!! Not that stable what you would expect of a "robust" multi-threading OS.

Date: Mon Mar 25 12:10:49 PST 1996

NT has been used as an application server and logon server with users accounts and directories for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Unix desktops. It has been fairly easy to administer except that we have had to license a product from Citrix to get a multiple connection/user version of NT.

Date: Mon Mar 25 13:45:44 PST 1996

I don't like it very much.

Date: Mon Mar 25 14:52:30 PST 1996

I want to use NT at work (desktop) as I already use it at home. I do some programming on Solaris in C++ and like to take advantage of the half-dozen or so SMP servers on our network for running large parallel programs (techie stuff...) I find NT easy to install and use. It will most likely supplant servers like Netware that only do one thing. I like the ecological metaphor, in the absence of competition, one gets either over- specialization (Netware) and/or gigantism (mainframe). Omnivores (Unix & NT) will eventually rule. There is a place for both systems and they'll probably force each other to evolve faster than either would have alone. I'll probably use NT to build simple interfaces to my models as my manager is most comfortable in Excel. With NT, I have a robust environment that I can use to extend Excel. This will probably include calls to Unix servers (Solaris) to do the real work. The user just won't see it. I don't know if NT will replace Netware across the whole company here, but I wish it would, our Netware servers don't seem that reliable to me. It might be, however, the guys managing them. The fact that you need to be a Netware techie (CNE) probably says enough about administering the beast. The people I know that use NT as a server seem to be really happy with it.

Date: Tue Mar 26 11:06:47 PST 1996

Very easy installation process. The scsi device's I unplugged from my Solaris 2.4 LX and plugged into the NT came up easily, and with no "tailoring". The technical documentation on the real workings of NT seem to be only available through formal education, and Resource Kits. Easy to work on, easy to use, and very stable OS. The extra's that make it an open systems solution (X-server, X-client, NFS, etc.) are very shakey and currently fairly limited in scope.

Date: Tue Mar 26 11:00:50 PST 1996

NT is the network operating system for the global WAN as well as the LAN. As a file and application server, it is fine. As an Oracle Database Server, it seems OK, but not great. I have only used NT for a few months. It is no harder to learn than Unix

Date: Tue Mar 26 05:54:29 PST 1996

I like the look and feel of NT over Solaris. We want NT on a SPARC now!!! We want NT on a SPARC now!!! We want NT on a SPARC now!!! We want NT on a SPARC now!!!

Date: Mon Mar 25 20:09:01 PST 1996

Windows NT is great. :-)

Date: Tue Mar 26 20:59:54 PST 1996

I've been working with NT for several years. My experiences with NT are primarily positive. Overall, NT provides a solid platform for our server needs and also provides a better, more secure, desktop than Windows 3.x for those PC's with enough horsepower and RAM to support NT. In my opinion, the biggest strength of NT is it's ease of administration. For most common tasks, a consistent GUI is provided for the adminstrator. Also, there's a common model that's followed by most software vendors for setup and configuration of NT software. Additionally, the ability to adequately perform the functions of file and print server, general applications server, and also support end user desktop applications is a major plus for NT. I'm sure that Unix may be a better platform for many applications; and NetWare is arguably a better file and print server. But most organizations do not have the staff to maintain expertise for multiple client server operating environments; especially for adminstration of small or remote branch sites. This is where NT is a nice fit as a "jack of all trades" even if it's "the master of none". I'll admit that my experience with Unix systems is limited and somewhat dated. However, my memories of using vi to setup most configuration information are not pleasant memories. Also, the need to configure each application independently for such things as printer drivers was a real pain. But ease-of-use and ease-of-integration is relative to one's personal experience.

Date: Wed Mar 27 14:50:08 PST 1996

We have a server set up and several desktop systems that are being evaluated, and are planning on beginning to put NT workstations on desktops in our administrative area soon. It has been well received for its robustness as far as computers not crashing. And with the W95 interface now an intergral part of NT 4.0 it has gotten rid completely of the ugly old Windows 3.x style native interface. Installation and integration has not been that easy to learn and there were many headaches involved in learning the ins and outs of the installation process. Even now we are grappling with nuances of how to support these systems easily. From a user's perspective I expect it to be a win. From a systems support perspective it's hard now, but I am anticipating it will get easier as we acquire more intimate knowledge of the OS. One thing I've found very weak is the documentation that is written for the support staff. It all contains a great deal of information, but the organization is abysmal.

Date: Wed Mar 27 14:56:46 PST 1996

NT has been very well received here as a workstation solution. It has solved some troublesome issues regarding multiple heavy duty graphics/mathmatical applications open all at once. It is an easy, relatively robust solution for X connectivity that also provides hooks into office productivity software. For the most part, installation and support has been pretty breezy. We have had problems with a few systems and wish there was a larger set of specialized drivers for NT, but they will come. We use NT in an integrated environment - Sun Unix systems, Novell servers, PCs and Macs at the desktop and it has proved to be quite versatile. I am NOT a Microsoft fan, but so far NT has shown itself to be a useful, flexible OS for our company. Documentation is EXTREMELY obfuscatory! Simple issues are not addressed or are buried in the manuals. The tech support has for the most part been okay, but I have had a call or two that really pissed me off! When I am paying a hundred bucks for a support call, I expect the support engineers to be knowledgeable, helpful and sharp!

Date: Wed Mar 27 20:44:07 PST 1996

Working in the CAD?CAM area, NT has been very well accepted. We will be implementing EDM/PDM, Workflow, Drawing Management solutions onm NY / Oracle platforms. We are just getting NT installed.

Date: Thu Mar 28 06:22:13 PST 1996

Currently only used as Windows/Intel application server using WinCenter and WinDD.

Date: Thu Mar 28 07:46:51 PST 1996

The prior experiences of NT are irrelevant because it is viewed as a not- yet mature product. The commitment of MS carries considerable value with non technical persons who (sometimes) rule by fiat, and who control purchasing practices.

Date: Thu Mar 28 13:45:04 PST 1996

It is still a new product for us but it is being recieved favorably by the user community which will be affected (newpaper pagination). How well it will scale up in our environment is an open question (in my mind) I personally am wary of it (and microsoft in general) but novell seems incapable of countering NT's perceived strengths, providing clear arguments in favor of Netware and Novell's continued aragance all favor NT.

Date: Thu Mar 28 14:09:40 PST 1996

At the moment, we are testing nt as an MS Exchange server and as a RAS server (ppp). Exchange is fairly impressive, and RAS is very impressive. NT is generally a breeze compared to Solaris. But Solaris is still far more powerful and I would give my life for it (as would any other SysOp in their right mind),

Date: Thu Mar 28 16:53:17 PST 1996

Geez, what's your fetish with NT? It appears to be a Poor Unix-like O/S to me.

Date: Thu Mar 28 22:37:29 PST 1996

One programmer in my group called NT, "...all of the pain of Unix but none of the gain." One programmer is using it so that we can claim knowledge of it as an organization. NT's ease of use only exists for those already entrenched in MS-DOS and earlier MS Windows systems. For those of us who haven't lived and breathed the religion of Microsoft, it's no easier to use than Unix, more difficult to develop for, and clearly less capable out of the box. Windows NT will be an open architecture OS when there are competitors making OS's that will run 99% of NT applications. I can't actually imagine that ever happening.

Interview with Solaris head MacKay

Check out our back issues

News: "Jakarta" is how Microsoft spells Java

SunWorld Online is published by Web Publishing Inc., an IDG Communications company, independently of Sun Microsystems Inc., which is not responsible for its contents. The opinions expressed in SunWorld Online are those of the authors or the publisher, WPI/IDG, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its advertisers, or of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its affiliates.

If you have problems with this magazine, contact webmaster@sunworld.com

URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-04-1996/swol-04-nt.comments.html
Last update: 1 April 1996

If you have technical problems with this magazine, contact webmaster@sunworld.com

URL: http://www.sunworld.com/swol-04-1996/swol-04-nt.comments.html
Last modified: