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Many of these other folks are trying to talk to you in friendly tones, too. From what I can tell, all you want to do is make the "other guy" look bad. I'm sick of your attitude and snotty tone.

If you want to be honest and not merely fling ideology -- as many people around here do unceasingly -- fine. I will respect that. I acknowledge that MS has a lot of room to improve in security, reliability, usability, and performance. But I do insist on an honest debate. Merely asserting that your solution is *better* because you say so doesn't cut it -- and I won't cut you any slack if you say so.

This isn't exactly true. You always pay a premium for top of the line performance. I don't have a problem with Window's price point, or having a good price/performance ratio. This has always been the selling point for IBM/Intel and Microsoft/Intel. But performance costs, whether it's a mid or large computer.

And as I showed in my recent post, the clustered Windows transaction performance almost doubles the performance of the non-clustered Unix boxes at half the cost.

So if you are going to debate, please try to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. First you were saying that Microsoft beat Unix totally, but then you back-pedaled and restricted yourself to the lower end computers.

Ah, but as I just told you, MS beat Unix at both the high and low end. The Unix guys simply don't want to look at clustered configurations, though.

The cost of these machines does not end with the purchase price. There are many other factors involved with a major purchase in the multi millions of dollars. Have you actually signed a deal for a multimillion dollar computer, then had to set it up and operate it? I have, being in the oil industry. I also spec out the midrange computers, too. The cost does not end with the purchase price. It never has. There are support contracts, maintenence, what is the expected life of the equipment, who at your company has the skills to make the beast worth the money, has your company committed to a particular platform already, etc.

Compaq, Unisys, and other companies offer support plans which guarantee 5-9's uptime. They will actually reimburse you for lost busines so, consequently, they take uptime very seriously. Even with those costs, the overall package in all likelihood costs less than what the big Unix vendors can offer. The problem, though, is that many IT shops are already dealing with a particular Unix vendor and don't want to incur collateral costs relating to porting a particular database or code from one platform to the other. Plus retraining their staff. In other words, it's safer to stay with what they have than move to a completely disparate architecture such as NT/Win2K. This is definitely a hidden factor in the cost. I understand your points, Classic, and you make them well. I'm simply tired of people misrepresenting what Windows can and can't do. Yes, traditionally Windows has targeted the low end. But with clustering, Windows is capable of meeting mid-to-high-end needs, despite what many in the pro-Unix camp would have you believe.

Moreover, at $21.33 per transaction, this result lays claim to the best price-performance of any entry in the top ten performance list, whose remaining systems cost twice as much per transaction on average.

That is the only spot in the entire article that mentions price/performance. The rest of the article deals with the numbers that I posted.

The point I was making was the fact that the numbers mentioned in the article do not jive with the website any longer.

Maybe you should: 1) re-read the article and 2) not skip the big words that are apparently hurting your brain. MS does NOT compare to the high end systems as well as Uncle Bill wants everyone to beleive and your comprehension of the article is skewed as well. Another thing you may want to check out is the date of the article itself - November 11,2001. The HP server I highlighted that beats the Windows server was tested on December 21, 2001, showing how the Unix community has begun to responded to the challenge.

Like I said - I deal with at lot of different systems on a daily basis. Each has its strong and weak spots. You have to look at all the data to make the best decision. If you need a "Datacenter server" for a large operation, Unix (not Microsoft) is the way to go.

For something else interesting - but along the same lines - have a look at the Top 500 Supercompters then look at this site. Take note on the second site how many of the world's fastest 500 Supercomputers are clusters - a lot of them from the Unix houses (Sun, Compaq and IBM)

Enjoy,
DataDink