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Conference star::wizards

Title:	"ASK THE WIZARDS"

Moderator:	QUARK::LIONEL

Created:	Mon Oct 30 1995
Last Modified:	Mon May 12 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1857
Total number of notes:	3728

1707.0. "Open: strengths and weaknesses of O/Ses?" by STAR::JKEENAN () Tue Apr 08 1997 12:06

Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 10:39:00 -0500
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
From: "VMS001::WWW"@vms001.das-x.dec.com (28-Mar-1997 1039)
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Ask the Wizard: '[email protected]'

Remote Host: (null)
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Name: Steve Knox
Email Address: [email protected]
CPU Architecture: Alpha
Version: Other
Questions: 

I am in the good/bad position of buying a computer system
for a new company.  We are starting a nutritional
products mail order company and will use the computer
for order entry, credit card billing, printing packing
slips, and some month-end summary processing.

Since there is no existing software or data to convert
and we will be writing our own custom code I can
essentially choose anything I want.

I have decided to choose Digital Alpha for price/
performance reasons, but I have made no decision on the
operating system (Unix, OpenVMS, NT).

I will not attempt to ask which is better.  Rather, can
you briefly tell me the strengths and weaknesses of each
in enough detail that I can make an informed choice.

Different people have their own opinions, but they seem
unable to articulate a clear comparison between the 3
operating systems.

What I am personally looking for is something I can set
up and forget, something which requires very little
babysitting, relatively simple to adminster, is very
stable, and almost never needs to be restarted (please
don't laugh).

Sincerely

Steve Knox

T.R Title User Personal
Name Date Lines

1707.1 All Three Are Good... XDELTA::HOFFMAN Steve, OpenVMS Engineering Wed Apr 09 1997 10:31 19

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
1707.1	All Three Are Good...	XDELTA::HOFFMAN	Steve, OpenVMS Engineering	`Wed Apr 09 1997 10:31`	19
	The choice of an operating system depends on personal taste and on the availability of necessary applications and on price/performance more than on any list of strengths and weaknesses. Given: "What I am personally looking for is something I can set up and forget, something which requires very little babysitting, relatively simple to adminster, is very stable, and almost never needs to be restarted (please don't laugh)." I'd recommend OpenVMS. I've seen system up-times well over a year, limited only by the occasional power-failure. (But OpenVMS is what I am familiar with, and I am hardly a disinterested party here.) I'd suspect you would be able to find folks that recommend NT and UNIX similarly...

   The choice of an operating system depends on personal taste and on
   the availability of necessary applications and on price/performance
   more than on any list of strengths and weaknesses.

   Given:

"What I am personally looking for is something I can set
up and forget, something which requires very little
babysitting, relatively simple to adminster, is very
stable, and almost never needs to be restarted (please
don't laugh)."

   I'd recommend OpenVMS.  I've seen system up-times well over a year,
   limited only by the occasional power-failure.  (But OpenVMS is what
   I am familiar with, and I am hardly a disinterested party here.) 
   I'd suspect you would be able to find folks that recommend NT and
   UNIX similarly...