Jim Polaski
In article <c6e5k9$tq1$2@gargoyle.oit.duke.edu>, Jeffery Priddy <jpriddy@spambegone.mail.duke.edu>wrote:

Jeffery Priddy
In news:jpolaski-EB3E4E.03510723042004@netnews.comcast.net, Jim Polaski <jpolaski@NOync.net>wrote:

Jim Polaski
The study also compared a number of hardware alternatives and proposed the following cost comparisons: DOS $8,980 Windows 3.1 $7,251 Windows 95 $6,530 Windows NT $6,516 Macintosh $5,075 UNIX $12,973

Considering that W2K is NT in a new coat of paint, this may just be not too far off even today.

Jeffery Priddy
No, Jim, you're completely wrong about that. Believe me, I have a lot of experience with NT4 and W2k, and W2k was a BIG improvement. Almost as big as OS 9 to OS X. NT was *extremely* picky about hardware and drivers, had a more limited HCL than 9x and W2k, and had no built-in support for USB or power management. W2k is very good IME WRT plug and play-- not perfect, but orders of magnitude better than NT for adding new hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if just the PnP and USB alone could push W2k's TCO way lower than NT's. And don't get me started about Active Directory and Group Policy-- anybody who knows how to leverage those well in a corporate environment can really improve their TCO, and the policy model for W2k is vastly richer than for NT4. At the risk of being blunt, I don't really think you know what you're talking about here.

Now, if you said that XP was W2k with a new coat of paint, I'd say that's not too far from the truth. But NT? No way, no how.

Jim Polaski
Jeff, you can fault me for a bad metaphor if you will, but yes, W2k is an improvement, etc and far better than XP for what it's worth to many.

That said, I've also never said I was an expert on NT or W2k in the same manner that the Windiots claim to be experts in the Mac.