From: rkz@symbolics.com
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Re: X Under Windows NT
Date: 12 Oct 92 16:52:57 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Workstation Div., Supermicro Systems Group, Sony Corporation

Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 12:16:25 EDT
Message-Id: <9210121616.AA28882@s1.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

>In article <BvtKvK.3I2@mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
>>
>>I wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating WNT's importance or MS's
>>muscle, but on the other hand, when you _do_ look at the demographics of
>>the situation, you see millions of PCs with not enough memory or disk space
>>to even think about running WNT.  Who is MS targeting?  According to their
>                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>hype, the "power users".  Who are the power users?  Well, the scientific
>>community is a very important sector of what the marketeers call "power
>>users."
>>
>
>NT is targetted squarely at the market Unix addresses IN BUSINESS, ie one of
>networked machines with centralised file servers. I hate to break this to you
>but the growing market is business. This is because the scientific community
>already has it's (albeit old?) machines installed, whereas many businesses
>are just starting to invest in a big way. This is who Microsoft are after, the
>businesses who need to network, but are currently running DOS. It's got to
>be the biggest computer market, and will be for probably at least five years
>as every business suddenly finds they can't control their information flow
>without a server.
>
>I should qualify what I mean by business here. What I am thinking of is
>companies of 100 people or less, who have just cottoned on to the fact that
>is can be quite convenient to be able to send electronic mail. These folks
>are not power users, they use DOS day to day for simple invoicing, parts,
>memos, etc. They do not yet have an information system as such, they just
>realise that DOS is lacking, and lo and behold, look what's coming over the
>horizon, a saviour, NT!
>
>What they don't know is that, if they thought learning DOS was tricky, just
>wait until NT hits the fan. The salesman/papers/magazines haven't quite
>explained this side of the story to them. If you want to make some money,
>get into network administration next year...
>
>I don't see that NT is going to be any better than Unix, since it aims to
>fulfill exactly the same niche, and it's got 15 years to catch up on.
>However, Microsoft will have learnt from Unix's mistakes, and will also
>have a customer base who are virtually on their knees and begging.
>
>

I would argue that this might apply to corporate users, but the 100 person
or
less company is typically a DOS shop since their computing needs are
usually
word processing and accounting.  Many of these companies are still
operating
in the blissfully ignorant state of standalone DOS applications adapted to 
run on a Novell network. I should know I support a number of small
operations
running everyday applications over a Novell network.  The real crying need
in
these companies is for DOS software that runs well in a work group
environment,
on cheap machines, and provides the services that they are currently using.

NT is not the answer to these people. Too expensive both in hardware and
software.
What they want are applications that understand the interaction between the
multiple
users on the network. They don't care if its client/server or anything
else, they just
want it to work, and not require a heavy duty computer jock to get it
running.

Is NT going to be a success? Sure. Is UNIX going to go away? Maybe. What NT
offers
that the UNIX world does not is a single vendor solution to the problem.
This is
not a case of everybody else doing one thing and another vendor doing
something 
different. There are no warring factions, splitting the marketplace.  NT,
like the 
Macintosh, is a single API.

The NeXT machine is a good example of what UNIX has to evolve to to compete
effectively
against the PC and the Macintosh.  The power of the system has to be
evident to the user
only in the total flexibility of the machine, and not in the nightmare most
UNIX systems
are to maintain (I might add that PCs are no joy either because of the
memory management
archicheture of DOS).

For the time being UNIX machine will remain the servers of choice in
situations where
large multiuser databases are employeed. The machines that win the desktop
could be
PCs running Windows or OS/2 or NT, or they could be UNIX machines running X
(lower
probability because of costs), or (rarely) Macintoshs. 

Enough said...

Randy Zeitvogel
Symbolics, Inc.