Win NT / Outlook Express

[MossRoad]

Here's a message that we use to get on our system:

The VAX will be going down in

And then your terminal would lock up! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Wingnut]

Vax ... ahh ... quit making me salivate ... that was the worst part of getting transferred from Alberta ... there I had my beloved (and working) Vaxen ... here I have to put up with M$crap that crashes more often than an African airplane!

 

[Wingnut]

heh heh heh ... one of my systems people just passed this over (after ANOTHER) wonderful security problem:

hem: Important user, NT box, lost admin password, sad, sad, sad.

Me: No problem, change password with magic linux disk, offline NT password editor.

Them: No, no, no. Never work. NT secure. Get real.

Me: Watch. (reboot)

Them: Gasp! This floppy is dangerous! Where did you get it?

Me: Internet. Been around forever.

Them: How do we keep students from using this?

Me: Can't. Migrate. Linux. Mac.

Them: No, no, no. Just make NT safe.

Me: Can't. NT inherently unsafe.

Them: Must be safe. NT good. We have never seen problems.

Me: You just saw one now.

Them: No, no, no. NT good. Win2k better.

Me: Win2k is NT. Same thing. Should I give this floppy to a student?

Them: No, no, no. Give here.

Me: Whatever. What do you want me to do?

Them: Change admin password.

Me: Fine. To what?

Them: "p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d"

Me: No, no, no.

 

[scruffy]

MossRoad, yup, the proverbial (whenever SCHEDULED) downtime is upon you, any decent admin will notify the users that the system is going to go down in X minutes for maintenance. I always start mine off at an hour before, and every 15 minutes up til 5 minutes out, in which they will get a 5 minute warning, and a 1 minute warning, after that, tough patooties! They are toast. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif Always some die-hards out there!
NOTE: You got the warning didn't you? Do you think the NT systems give you any warning when they CRASH? the VAX system rarely crashes...does happen, but is extremely rare. /w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

 

[scruffy]

Wingnut, you have my heartfelt sympathy! While I like Unix, and Linux, and have no compunctions at running a Unix system, I would miss the stability and adaptability of the VAX/VMS systems.
NT? Not on your life! Ain't nothing I want to do with them *&^%$#@ networks. I can run an entire 1000 user network by myself (been there, done that), and while it is a real handful, the NT side of the house needs 10 people to accomplish the same thing, and not as trouble free either!

 

[looch]

I can relate. What I hate is when I try to kill a process in NT and it tells me "Access is denied." Denied!? Who does this machine think it's dealing with? I am the human, I rule you. In UNIX I can just ps -ef | grep whatever and kill -9 PID. I can live with the consequences of killing something I shouldn't. I can't live with a machine not allowing me to make that decision. The way I see it, MS assumes that the administrator is a weenie whereas UNIX makes no assumption at all. I don't have any VAX/VMS experience but it sounds like something I could get along with.

 

[MossRoad]

Sure NT gives you a warning. It is called an intuitive warning. First your e-mail starts acting up. Then stops working. Same goes for file services. Then no one can log on. Someone calls IT department. You log into the NT box and after 5-6 minutes, you start the task manager. You notice that system idle is 98%, yet nothing works. Now you know that it is time to reboot.

 

[scruffy]

Yeah, reboot everytime you turn around. Can't install new hardware without rebooting. VAX/VMS ? I reboot after major OS loads to reset parameters, and during normal maintenance (just for grins). I've seen them up and running a year straight without reboot, but I prefer to reboot monthly just to clean up anything that I may have missed. Don't need a reboot to add a printer, scanner, or anything else to it. I run daily/weekly/monthly script files to cleanup log files etc. By scheduling, they run on their own, and I just look at the output files. Saves a bunch of time. Gotten lazy in my older age, and would rather spend 10 minutes looking at log files, than two hours digging out the information.
The Alpha's are sweet platforms, very reliable, stable systems. Of course, the OS is a major part of the overall system performance. NT on an ALPHA runs nice, but due to its inherant flakiness, is still a pain in the rump. Unix is nice on the Alphas also....and I believe Red Hat has a version to run on the Alpha's also.