January 7, 2008
Top 5 Ways Windows is Better Than Unix or Linux
Windows is better than Unix/Linux. Now that I’ve incited volumes of hatred from my Unix/Linux brethren, let me clarify my stance. I work with massively heterogeneous environments. For the past 10 years, every company I’ve supported has utilized at least 3 different operating system platforms including multiple versions and flavors of Linux, Unix, Windows, with some mid-frame (As/400) and Novell thrown in for good measure. The experience has taught me to choose the best tool for the job, rather than get religious about a platform. There are many functions that Windows performs better than *nix, and the *nix community should embrace them.
I hire a lot of Unix/Linux sys admins. One of my favorite interview questions for them is: “Name 5 ways Windows is better than Unix/Linux.” This is a great stress question, because most *nix guys think Microsoft is the devil. But Microsoft remains the most successful software company in the world. If you cannot recognize the areas where Microsoft excels, you are artificially narrowing your view of the world, which means you aren’t making the best technology decisions for your company, which means you can’t work for me (To be fair, I also ask Windows guys to name ways Unix/Linux is better than Windows). As a public service to *nix admins everywhere, I offer this list of 5 ways Windows is better than *nix. There are many others, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much info at once. It might overload your system, and cause a kernel panic. 
- Windows XP is the best productivity desktop
- Windows 2003 Active Directory Service is the best directory service
- Windows DNS is the best internal DNS server
- Exchange 2007 is the best groupware application platform
- Windows has better hardware support with vendor-supported drivers
Let the flame wars begin! Seriously though, I stand by each of those pronouncements. For those of you who haven’t run screaming from the room, my reasoning is below:
#1 Windows XP is the best productivity (and gaming) desktop - If you want an OS that is stable, fast, supports every hardware device you are likely to need/want, runs the best games, and had the best applications, Windows XP is your choice. It just freakin works. This is why it is also the most popular desktop OS on the market. Not because of slick marketing or predatory practices. Most companies have standardized on XP because it offers superior productivity for their user community. Apple and Linux fill niches, but for general purpose desktops, XP is the way to go. Here are a couple of “killer apps” that make XP the choice for most businesses:
- Office Suite - Microsoft Office is the de facto standard. Sure there are alternatives, such as Open Office, but they are cheap clones that do not offer the power, ease of use, or compatibility with the rest of the world.
- Best-of-Breed Specialty Applications - Photoshop, Illustrator, Project, Visio, AutoCAD. This is but a short list of products that professionals know are the best tools for the job. They all run best on Windows XP, although some might argue Photoshop runs better on a Mac. Again, there are *nix alternatives, but they are clones, not best-of-breed. You can run many of these using Wine, Cross-Over, or VMWare, but why emulate the best product when you can run the best product?
- Wireless & cellular Support - I have yet to find the wireless network I cannot connect to with XP, but I’ve had plenty of problems under Linux. For Christmas, I got a shiny new Asus EeePC. It is a cool toy, but out of the box, it doesn’t support WPA2 encryption. There are a variety of hacks available, but they all stink. I also just bought a Cingular cellular card for my laptop. Works great under XP, but not under Ubuntu. The problem with wireless support is two-fold: 1) Manufacturers are lazy, so they only produce drivers for the market leaders, Windows and Apple. 2) Manufacturers want to keep their Intellectual Property to themselves, rather than release it under GPL. As a consumer, I don’t care. It works under XP, and sucks under *nix.
- VPN Support - The major VPN hardware manufacturers support Windows, but not Linux. Again, their are hacks, work arounds, etc., but if you want to install it and know it will work, XP is the better choice.
Windows XP = more powerful applications and lower end-user support costs. In IT, that is what we should be focused on. Not what is cool, “free,” or “not-proprietary.” Note I did not say Windows Vista. Vista has some cool features, but is filled with bloat, and should probably die the same death as Windows ME & Microsoft BOB. The general rule of thumb for Microsoft desktop OSes is you should always skip a generation. Windows 95 was a good concept, but it was buggy, but Windows 98 was solid and stable. Windows ME was terrible. Windows 2000 professional was OK, but Windows XP is solid. It will probably be another 3 years before I upgrade away from XP, giving me a solid 10 years on the platform. Not bad for a desktop OS, and well worth the $100 the license cost me.
#2 Windows 2003 Active Directory Service is the best directory service - Single sign-on is a big deal in most IT shops. Windows 2003 ADS is the easiest, fastest, most cost-effective solution for building a a directory service for all your users, all your desktops, and all your applications. And because ADS is based on LDAP, and the Internet Authentication Service (IAS) supports RADIUS, ADS can also provide single sign-on for all your *nix servers and your network gear. ADS also includes a bunch of features that make it suitable to support even the largest organizations; the two most important being administrative delegation, and multi-master replication. Administrative delegation allows you to push specific tasks, such as password resets to lower-paid, lower skilled helpdesk people. It also supports compliance initiatives such as Separation of Duties (if you’ve ever been through a SOX audit, you understand). Many companies use this to delegate tasks such as user creation and deletion to Human Resources. The MMC GUI interface lessens the learning curve for delegated administrators.
Multi-Master replication is almost as cool, and in some ways far more useful. In ADS, all domain controllers act as a master. This means that you have no single point of failure, since any one server can die. It also means that changes can be made on any server and they replicate out to all others. If you have admins in London and Tokyo, they can each work on locale servers and receive each other’s updates. Setting up a new domain controller, once the OS is installed is a single command function: DCPROMO. Once the new server is promoted, the entire directory gets replicated. Of course there are additional considerations that Windows Admins must make for everything to work properly (sites, OUs, FSMOs, etc.), but the fundamental architecture is simple, secure, stable, easier to use, and more powerful than any other directory server on the market.
#3 Windows DNS is the best internal DNS server - When it comes to hosting your internal (non-internet facing) DNS, the best tool for the job is Windows 2003, Active Directory (ADS) Integrated DNS zones. If you are not using Windows 2003 to host your DNS service, you are working too hard and should switch immediately. There are several reasons for this:
- Your Windows Domain needs Windows DNS to work properly. According to every market share statistic out there, the chances are high that you already have a Windows domain, and therefore a Windows DNS infrastructure, for your desktop users. If you use a separate set of DNS servers to support your Unix/Linux servers, or your e-commerce infrastructure, you have to ask yourself why.
- Windows ADS-integrated zones support multi-master replication out of the box. Ok, so I repeated a feature from #2, but applying it to DNS is even cooler. Multi-master DNS is especially useful when operating multiple data centers, that occasionally cannot communicate with each other, either as a normal operation or during a disaster scenario. Multi-master ensures changes can be made anywhere, and will replicate to all other DNS servers. Multi-master is possible on *nix BIND servers, but it is a pain to setup and maintain. Setting it up on Windows is trivial.
- ADS stores DNS records in a database instead of a zone file. This makes it easier to query and update individual records. It also means that when a host record is updated, only the single changed record gets replicated to other servers, rather than the whole zone file. For large zones, with thousands of records, this can have a significant performance boost.
- Windows supports Dynamic DNS (DDNS) and integrates with Windows DHCP. As clients are assigned IP addresses, DHCP registers the new IP with DNS as A & PTR records.
- Like all Windows functions, DNS can be administrated by a simple MMC GUI. This lowers the skill and cost of administrating DNS records.
- Windows also offers a powerful, scriptable command line interface to DNS: DNSCMD. DNSCMD is part of the Windows 2003 Support Tools. Need to create 500 host records, both forward and reverse, in different domains and subnets? DNSCMD can do it with a 1-line script (see my next blog article for an example). There is no *nix alternative that is this simple or powerful.
#4 Exchange 2007 is the best groupware application platform - Exchange 2007 & the Outlook client may be the single best product suite Microsoft makes. I specify groupware and not e-mail, because the true power of Exchange goes beyond mere messaging. If all you want is e-mail, IMAP will do. Exchange/Outlook is a collaborative suite which includes messaging, shared calendars, shared tasks, public folders, and a built-in workflow engine. Add to this wireless activesync and you can take the power of Exchange with you in your pocket on a Windows Mobile phone, or a Blackberry. Exchange also supports custom forms that are self-contained, self-distributing applications that unlock its true power. In addition, Exchange includes full-text indexing of messages and attachments, compliance journaling of messages, integrated local and global clustering, a full featured web-mail interface, and a unified messaging system. Lotus Notes, Oracle Collaboration Suite and Novell Groupwise simply don’t measure up.
#5 Windows has better hardware support with vendor-supported drivers - One of the most frustrating things about the *nix world is lack of vendor hardware support. This is true for both desktops and servers. The major Unixes are proprietary, because the vendors want you to buy their hardware. And while Linux can claim to support more hardware than Windows, the drivers are usually reverse-engineered hacks that the manufacturer doesn’t support, or wrappers around Windows drivers, such as NDIS. Because Windows is the most popular and universal OS, every hardware manufacturer writes its drivers for Windows. And since Windows doesn’t carry the GPL penalty, manufacturers are free to innovate and keep their intellectual property to themselves. The end result is that under Windows XP and Windows 2003, hardware just works. That is the power of market share.
To be fair, the same thing cannot be said of Vista or Windows 2003 64-bit. It will take a few years before the manufacturers have re-written their drivers for 64-bit, but Unix and Linux have the same issues. 32-bit Linux supports more hardware than 64-bit. The same problems occurred when we changed from 16-bit to 32-bit in the mid-90s. The key is vendor support. If I had a nickel for all the times a vendor told me they didn’t support a given flavor of Linux, or a specific Kernel revision, or the number of times a kernel *upgrade* broke some functionality, I’d have a lot of nickels.
So that’s my list. I could probably come up with 20 other reasons. I also have a long list of reasons why Unix is better than Linux, and an equally long list of ways Linux is best. The point is there is no one OS to rule them all. It’s a complex world out there, and we are better off choosing the right tool for the job, rather than letting prejudices blind us to the possibilities.
TenSigh said,
January 7, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
I agree with you overall. I don’t like Windows sometimes, but it just works. I hate the fact that Linux is the most exciting OS yet also the most breakable.
Windows is better that Unix and Linux, Sometimes... | edgeblog said,
January 8, 2008 @ 7:01 am
[...] I agreed with Bill’s last article, until I read the part that said “Windows is better than [...]
kit said,
January 25, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
To be fair, who paid you to write that crap?
bill said,
January 25, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
Kit,
If you think I’m wrong, provide evidence. Show me where Unix/Linux beats Windows in any of those areas.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
-Bill
joe said,
January 29, 2008 @ 4:52 am
Is this for real? You have used UNIX correct?
Microsoft’s financial success is not based on technical superiority. Weak argument.
Game OS? I thought we were talking about corporate environments.
Just addressing the silly name related stuff:
Recent BIND version support dynamic dns and SRV records.
Setting up secondary namerservers is trivial and also doesn’t require traversal of unsafe protocols across the internet.
I can find and alter zone records with one liners, much fast than a query. Even the largest zones are going to fit in a handul of packets. Properly configured name architecture are not transferring zones frequently anyway.
Yawn, BIND supports dynamic dns. Why do you need windows DHCP anyway. More question begging.
Setting up
This last bit is truly hilarious. You don’t think that UNIX text processing tools can create 500 host records with ease? You seriously want to suggest that proprietary windows scripting languages can compete with forty years of development in text processing?
w2bh said,
January 29, 2008 @ 9:58 am
You are getting the whole question wrong.
First of all, Linux is just a kernel. It’s kind of tricky trying to *technically* compare Windows to Linux, because the first is an (in)operating operating system, while the latter is a kernel.
You are of course refering to the GNU+Linux operating system, wich most people know as “Linux”. That would be more meaningful, if you were trying to compare them *technically*.
If you concentrate in the technical area, you’ll find areas where one surpasses the other, or one is more convenient than the other, or whatever. When you look at the issue from a technical point of view, there is no definite answer.
However, the GNU+Linux system exists because of the Free Software Movement that Richard Stallman started in 1983/84. Think free as in free speech, not free as in free beer. The goal of the Free Software Movement is to enable people to use computers and keep their freedom. The GNU project was then started to translate these ethical concepts into an actual freedom-respecting operating system.
So, given that that was the issue that the system was designed to address, it’s meaningless to compare Windows and GNU+Linux in technical terms. The technical aspect is completely secondary: no matter how bad or good it runs, GNU+Linux will always be superior not only to Windows but to every proprietary piece of software out there, because it respects your freedom, wich makes it an ethical operating system. On the other hand, Windows, being propietary (or non-free), is an unethical user-subjugating operating system.
More information:
- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
bill said,
January 29, 2008 @ 10:35 am
w2bh,
Thanks for your comments. The distinction you make is meaningless to 99.99% of the world, including most of the Linux community.
RedHat sells Enterprise Linux, not Enterprise GNU+Linux system: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/. Same with Suse and others: http://www.novell.com/linux/.
Also, your premise that proprietary software is “unethical” is fundamentally flawed. The definition of ethical is “pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct. ” There is nothing wrong, immoral, unethical, etc. with a software developer licensing others to use his product, but not give them access to the code. True freedom involves choice for all individuals, including the choice to place value on my work product, and the choice to control that which I sell, that which I rent, and that which I keep private.
But, even if I concede your point that I am really comparing the Windows operating system and related eco-system, to the GNU+Linux operating system, and related eco-system, as packaged by commercial distributors such as RedHat and Suse, my point remains. There are ways in which a Windows-based solution is superior. There are also ways in which a Linux-based or Unix-based solution is superior.
Can’t we all just get along?
bill said,
January 29, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Joe,
Thanks for your comments. Yes, I am serious. Yes, I have used Unix and Linux. I am currently responsible for an installed base of hundreds of Linux and Unix servers, as well as a handful of Windows boxes. Yes, you CAN manage DNS under Linux, but after years of experience doing both, I can say with absolute certainty that Windows is better. “Open your eyes…”
w2bh said,
January 30, 2008 @ 8:23 am
Further replies will be delivered here, to prevent duplicating efforts:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/5610#comment-285929
Thanks
Jeeves said,
March 15, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I’m open-minded enough to hear a fair argument as to why one OS is better than the other. But this article doesn’t provide any facts to back up the assertions.
On your first assertion of your first ‘point’, you state this:
“Microsoft Office is the de facto standard. Sure there are alternatives, such as Open Office, but they are cheap clones that do not offer the power, ease of use, or compatibility with the rest of the world.”
Standard according to whom? At least try to do a little research. Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that OO had a neat little feature, whereby you click a button in the toolbar and it converts your document to a PDF. “But Office 2008 does that too!”, you might say. Yeah. However, OO had that neat little feature built-in well before Office 2008 came out. Just by that alone, you can’t call OO a clone of Office 2008. Let’s see some strengths and weaknesses of each.
I could go on, but there’s really no point. If this were an essay written to persuade someone, there would be red all over the page. I’m awfully suspicious of bias here.
Gary Lake said,
April 1, 2008 @ 7:26 am
There are some points that must be conceded. Desktop and Exchange are hard to beat for the majority of circumstances. But in some areas I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Windows DNS is better ? Anyone who know how DNS is “meant” to work spends hours getting M$’s to behave properly in complex scenarios. If M$ made efforts to not extend open standards and make them proprietary they would gain wider acceptance. ADS is powerful no doubt, but “better” is debatable. Sounds like this guy got addicted to the mouse in the early 90’s and hasn’t been able to put it down since. If you want to do things “As Bill Sees it” all the time everytime, and live with their vision, windows is great, but get used to this command “REGEDIT”
Windows is great for the masses, but there is no doubt it has “DUMBED DOWN” most admins out there to the point the don’t know how basic standardards truely work anymore. Any good Unix admin can be converted to a fine Windows Admin, but I have rarely seen it go the other way.
Gary Lake said,
April 3, 2008 @ 3:49 am
There are some points that must be conceeded. Desktop and Exchange are hard to beat for the majority of circumstances. But in some areas I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Windows DNS is better ? Anyone who know how DNS is “meant” to work spends hours getting M$’s to behave properly in complex scenarios. If M$ made efforts to not extend open standards and make them proprietary they would gain wider acceptance. ADS is powerful no doubt, but “better” is debatable. Sounds like this guy got addicted to the mouse in the early 90’s and hasn’t been able to put it down since. If you want to do things “As Bill Sees it” all the time everytime, and live with their vision, windows is great, but get used to this command “REGEDIT”
kalabumba said,
April 11, 2008 @ 9:23 am
Jeeves: “you can’t call OO a clone of Office 2008. Let’s see some strengths and weaknesses of each.”
and you certainly do know, that OO is a Staroffice-branch. Staroffice developement began in the mid-80s, as far as i remember. That’s pretty much the same time (or at least around .. don’t really know “who was first” when MS came up with the early Versions of Word - and you will have to agree, that “Using the Computer as a typewriter replacement” isn’t that much of a fancy idea (i guess it was one of the first discussed uses of Homecomputers) so don’t tell me “they stole the genius idea to develop a word processor” (and again … it was pretty much the same time they firstly came up with the word/starwriter).
DNS:
)
I just have to flatly disagree with your statements - at least concerning my experiences, which are mostly home- and small business networks - using only linux and mac in a network you actually don’t need a DNS server because modern distros have avahi installed, which is a zeroconf implementation(just like apples Bonjour) for linux doing mDNS (multicast DNS) and DNS-SD(service discovery).
In small networks (only one subnet) you can “automagically” reach any linux/mac machine with its hostname without any real DNS server. Furthermore you can broadcast your own services via DNS-SD (believe me, its just fun to network with this setup).
Sure enough there is a point where you might want a real DNS server, but to be honest, this is the first time I heard about Windows being a DNS-server (for professional use) why would one do that? And to argue with your “OO is a clone” point: Bind was originally written in 1984 - did windows even exist back then? Not to mention that one wouldn’t wanna run dns on pre-NT versions of Windows right ?
Ah and one last thing: You wrote: “And since Windows doesn’t carry the GPL penalty, manufacturers are free to innovate and keep their intellectual property to themselves.”
This is just flatly false. Anybody can distribute a closed source non-GPL linux binary for whatever (including hardware drivers) without getting any GPL-penalty. GPL only aplies when you use GPL-code for your product. (there are dozens of examples: skype, the nvidia drivers, adobe flashplugin etc. which are distributed binary only (if only i could get my fingers on the skype sourcecode - the linux-version is even buggier than the windows version
I find it important to talk about these things, I’m not an Open Software Priest, I have used windows a long time and have to admit XP is a usable and pretty stable system but then again, it doesn’t let you do a whole bunch of things you might wanna do (at least not out of the box: like mounting a linux (or any other “weird”) filesystem, really customizing the UI (i mean more than chosing between those color schemes and “modern” vs “classical” look) and so on). - In my experience, especially when using linux on desktop (which i have been doing flawlessly for 4 years now) you really feel the freedom. They don’t put artificial obstacles in the users way if he really wants to change something. Where Windows is based on putting obstacles in front of you (if you’re planning something that is not 100% standard (i know there’s a whole world of Software for Windows, but you have to search the web, download and install it first. Whereas most linux Distros come with a package management system, that enables the user to “one click install” a whole buttload of wonderful software (Actually, one of the major reasons why I prefer Linux over Windows is because of Linux applications like Pidgin, GGZ (a gaming server for “minigames” similar to “icq X-traz”) and dozens of others, yes some of them have been ported to windows, but if i have windows i dont really want to have gtk widgets destroying my look&feel ;).
Ok, now I have to apologize for having written so much ;).
so long
Kalabumba
Liviu-Theodor Vîzdoagă said,
April 14, 2008 @ 1:18 am
I have something to say:
“If you cannot recognize the areas where Microsoft excels, you are artificially narrowing your view of the world” - true, but you can say that also about linux (and the latter is a mistake made by most people, because they have seen only Windows all around them, and say that it is easier - but it is actually like someone from UK will say that english is the simplest language spoken).
#1. Windows XP is the best productivity (and gaming) desktop.
I must agree that Windows XP is better than any other OS for gaming, but for productivity I can not agree. I find new linux distros much easear to use in office/internet browsing than Windows XP/Vista, and linux or multiplatform internet browsers better than Internet Explorer 7, which I find very unstable (and I decided to install other browsers in the network I administer). Also it is much easier to install programs in linux (and if you want with a GUI, use yum in Red-Hat based distros and Synaptic in Debian based distros). Also, you can find rpm or deb packages just ready to install on your PC. And you said you paid 100$ for Windows XP. OK, that was the price, but what about the rest of the programs you wrote about: Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, MS Project, MS Visio, AutoCAD? They also cost money, they are not for free cost, and they are not cheap. And if you want to install them on a network with (let’s say a small one) 20+ computers, you need to buy a copy on each PC. And if you have a bigger network, the issue grows even more. And yes, you can run these programs in linux, but you still need to buy them. So please, put the price for all such programs in your calculations, and not only the price for the OS, to be fair (and with the new numers, see if they remain with the lower end-user support costs, for both an individual and a network). Also the price for Windows seems to be inflated from one generation to another. And I do not think the Linux programs that make the job of the programs you mentioned are just clones, I think thy are just another ways to do a job, some will find them better, other worst than their windows counterparts.
“Windows XP = more powerful applications” - may be, but they are not part of the OS, but third-party made. What I mean is that a CD of a linux distro contains much more useful and usable programs than even a Windows dvd - in fact, the latter contains only the OS (unless you classify notepad, wordpad, paint and such as useful programs).
#2. No comment.
#3. What? There are linux alternatives to Windows DNS (and can be used in the GUI too). And I rarely seen Windows domains on networks (to be fair, one network using domains was installed by me, with Windows NT 4.0). And if Windows DNS is best, than why on my work network is used Fedora instead? And the OS-es used here, beside the Fedora servers, are Windows (98, XP Professional, Vista Ultimate) and (K/Edu)Ubuntu, also it is onother server with SUSE linux.
#4. I totally disagree. I find Exchange the worst groupware application platform and Outlook unusable.
#5. Windows has better hardware support with vendor-supported drivers. Yes it is true, but now the hardware comes more and more with linux drivers. And I have seen also new hardware that does not work with either Windows or Linux. Why that? I don’t know. And I have seen hardware which works well on linux and not at all in Windows. And if you want proprietary drivers in linux, you cand find them too (let’s say for video cards - both nVidia and AMD/ATI made such drivers, and I think they both made a very good job).
I agree with the last statement you made. We must choose the most usable environment available, but with one comment: we must not go broke for that one. And one word for about me: I also worked/learned with Solaris and UNIX, and I have seen also Mac OS (but not the new one, Max OS/X).
In the end, you can find and run proprietary programs also on Linux, and open-source programs on Windows, if you really need and/or want them.
Latest: nice joke about the kernel panic, but Windows too has a kernel, and if it had a panic, than you surely have to reinstall all OS and applications, whereas in Linux, all you have to do is to restart the GUI (sometimes to reboot).
kalabumba said,
April 14, 2008 @ 7:40 am
yea the kernel panic joke was nice .. rly
Berto-Fett said,
June 23, 2008 @ 5:42 am
Bill,
I miss your views sometimes… Just sometimes.
For any of you who may not know me, Bill and Jerry both were there as I “grew up” in the IT world. My views on the particular debate were directly influenced by these two gentleman and they both taught me to look at systems with neutrality and with the mindset of what is best for the particular situation.
I am pretty sure that ALL operating systems suck in some way. I surely wouldn’t give a fresh copy of Ubuntu to my father nor would I give him a copy of Vista for that matter.
For the “masses”, Microsoft has definitely cornered the market. However, it has cheapened the administration and engineering aspect experience for me.
We recently implemented an exchange cluster and the amount of money we had to throw at licensing made me shutter. But, we definitely will not have to worry about exchange going down any time soon.
As far as DNS, IMHO, BIND is the better product for stability. IIS vs. Apache, MSSQL vs. MYSQL… we know the pros and cons.
The bottom line is that MS has created the “Vanilla” product that will work exceptionally well with their own products and services. The same holds true with Red hat, Solaris and any other *nix flavor. IBM has one of the best databases out there, but the typical company doesn’t have money to burn on a 400.
It’s not a matter of what is the better product; it’s a matter of integration and how much money you want to throw at licensing and administration. Jerry once told me that the typical UNIX guy can do Windows administration with ease, the opposite is mostly untrue. The reason why I wanted to become a UNIX administrator was the fact that I could make a little more money, there are far less UNIX administrators out there than Windows administrators. (Fog this mirror, here’s your MCSE)
It’s impossible to say that one is better than the other and give hard evidence to support the argument.
Bill, keep plugging along and thanks for the topic. It will NEVER be solved or answered, but it will always provide a subject for a debate.
–Berto
Rafal said,
June 26, 2008 @ 9:01 am
I cannot agree about Exchange 2007. Probably Lotus Domino 7.x or 8.x is far better than Exchange.
Matt said,
July 18, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
Hi guys
Windows is better in some ways, but Linux is better in more ways.
Berto-Fett said,
July 23, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
Rafal,
I’m glad to see that someone actually reads my posts. I want to reply to your comment regarding Lotus being superior to Exchange.
Let me paint a picture for you…
When a member of the Mormon Church knocks on my door, I tell them that I will convert to their religion if they can prove to me that what they preach is true. I put one caveat into my bargain with them, you will have to provide me with unequivocal evidence that what they are saying is true and that you can use it using the defacto source (in Christianity being the Bible)
With that being said, provide to me evidence that Lotus is a superior product in ALL situations when 90+ % of all major businesses use some sort of Exchange solution to provide what these two products do. Also, find me an administrator that knows Lotus whom I can pay the least amount of money. I can find an administrator with an MCSE that can hit the ground running for less that 50K a year starting (a green guy of course) with no bad habits or opinions that have been garnered by posts such as this. The more obscure the application or platform, salary requirements rise.
To compound that, how much harder would it be to find a person to replace the Lotus admin if they left? If you were at the helm of a multi-billion dollar company and didn’t want to have to deal with finding admins that know obscure (let’s face it, it really is obscure compared to any MS or UNIX product) applications, what would you want to implement?
If you were starting a company with a miniscule IT budget and you needed to hire IT for cheap, what would you probably start with? Probably the solution that would have the least short and long term costs.
Now, if for some reason, the shop you work at started with Lotus products from day one, then yes, I would have to say that in that specific situation Lotus would be superior to Exchange. It would be fiscally smart due to the cost of integration.
In no way am I defending Microsoft. Domino is pretty slick mainly because you can tie it into a DB2 Database. But again, how many companies want to burn capital in initial and recurring costs on an IBM product. I am a big believer in open source and will defend it to the bitter end. However, I cannot let my opinions get in the way of the success of my company. That goes beyond being an admin, an engineer, or a janitor for that matter. If an open source solution would work better than a MS in a specific situation for me, I’ll use it. The some holds true with the opposite.
To sum up what I am trying to convey here… As I mentioned before, there is no way anyone can say that one is better than the other. If you do, you need to come up with hard evidence and very sound business reasons to do so.
–Berto
bill said,
July 23, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Sniff. Jerry and I are holding back the tears. Our little Berto-Fett has grown up! Applying business logic and ROI to a technology decision? Who could have guessed! Berto, we are so proud…
Jman6495 said,
July 30, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
congratulations you just offended 90% of the worlds hackers!
Farhan said,
July 31, 2008 @ 3:44 am
I think the author of this article is a misrosoft employee
bill said,
July 31, 2008 @ 6:02 am
Sorry Farhan, but no. Thanks for playing!
Jim said,
August 18, 2008 @ 10:16 am
http://ubuntu.sg/?p=59