Verizon Switches Programmers to Linux 276
wackysootroom writes: "According to
this article at News.com, Verizon saved $6 million in equipment costs by switching its programmers from UNIX and Windows workstations to Linux workstations running OpenOffice. The article says that the average cost per desktop workstation was cut from $22,000 to $3,000." jeffmurphy noted the same story, and wonders "What kind of (Windows) desktops were they buying previously at an average cost of $22k? It seems like software alone wouldn't account for that big of a cut."
That's insane. (Score:1, Insightful)
$22k per machine? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:$22k per machine? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:$22k per machine? (Score:2)
Re:$22k per machine? (Score:2)
Bad hackers, writing big endian dependent code. Bad! No more jolt!
Dave
Re: (Score:1)
What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Visual Studio ( Development ) Fees
Windows itself License Fees
and many others....
sum up all !
Re:What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k (Score:3, Interesting)
Visual Studio ( Development ) Fees - $2000
Windows itself License Fees - $199
Ok - That's less than $3K and that is assuming they paid retail. The real answer is in the article - the $22K also includes Unix boxes. I know we all enjoy blaming Microsoft but they are not the only one ringing up the bill here. I also think that this is typical press release inflation for the benefit on shareholders. Notice that they bury in the article the huge effort it took to rewrite the code.
Re:What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k (Score:1)
Re:What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, but can you *imagine* the expense to go from HP/UX to XP? I'm sure Microsoft wanted Verizon to do that. At least HP/UX is somewhat similar to Linux, making the porting process simpler.
I would have probably wanted to keep my HP/UX Workstation. But I guess they were needing to be upgraded. So you go with the best tool for the job.
It's also good to see Verizon standardizing on one development platform. Even if they continue to use MSN on their phones and website.
-BrentRe:What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k (Score:3, Interesting)
1. M$ Visio for all network diagrams.
2. M$ Project (Gotta read those due dates from project managers)
3. M$ Office - Most everything else.
4. Adobe PDFs
5. Putty - (Uses 850K of memory per instance compared to 22megs for SecureCRT, with multiple open, my pc is still usable!)
6. Mozilla - Little bit of a memory hog, but Its my favorite, skinned with orbital skin.
7. IE (Eroom, My god, support Mozilla damn it..)
8. Password safe (for my million passwords that change often)
9. Proxomitron (mostly for the proxy selector, big networks, dmz = lots o proxies)
10. Remedy Trouble Ticketing system. (Very nice product for trouble tickets, reports, etc.)
11. Helmsman for Nortel Documents.
12. Ned for Nokia docs.
13. Ericsson docs., still trying to get that program working. Looks like a dos program...
14. xwin32 (still downloading every 30 days, soon as that damn PO gets completed, I'll have my license... Everyone else uses the site licensed ReflectionsX)
15. Climax (cool name, lets me work on multple SGSNs at once. Written in java for windows.)
16. Winamp. (gotta have tunes, Digital-Imported Techno! Aqua Skin)
17. Trillian (Everybody has a different IM, and I only need 1, makes it easy to IM someone on a phone call for info..)
18. AT&T Global Dialer (Must say, for a modem connection, I dont get disconnected as much as my Earthlink account...)
19 Nortel VPN (for winxp and smp support)
20. Winzip 8.1 (Its even registered by our company!)
21. PocketPC software from M$ with gprs/cdpd modems.
I have a Sunblade (w/linux) next to me, but its mostly a gateway X box. I use screen alot, so I can disconnect, and let tasks run.
-
All comments are my own, not of my employeer...
Another list/backfill for the above (Score:2)
Re:What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k (Score:2, Interesting)
I would love if everyone used HTML with pdfs for the diagrams, but vendors like to charge you 10K for a cd that only works with thier viewers. (If you pay millions for hardware, whats 10K for a document cd?!)
The java programs seems to built for the windows platform, so it wont run under linux.
Xfree is cool, but I couldnt use my high end gfx cards with sparc linux, had to use the onboard m64s. ICK! SUN wont write linux drivers for some hardware, ya ya, why use linux when you can use Solaris. Have you even Tried Linux on Sparc? Awesome..
I'm Gonna stick with WinXP as my desktop, everything works great, cut&paste, cleartype makes it easy to read, very stable. What funcationality I miss, I just ssh into my unix box (smb mounted file dirs) and it fills the voids in windows. Using the best of both to get my work done. I tried to go Linux fulltime with VMware, but on the slow laptops work gives you, I need every eek of speed I can get. So if Im in VMWARE running windows most of the time, Might as well just use windows, and get back the speed. We have few guys using Vmware over Linux or FreeBSD, but it is slower, and they drop back to Win98se for speed. (I like WinXP over 98)
Maybe if I had a 2ghz, 1 gig ram, GF4 PC, I would be extremely happy. OH wait, we are trying to SAVE money. Damn.
Re:What kind of desktops were they buying for 22k (Score:2)
There are only 2 OSes that can do what they need which is develop Unix-software and run Openoffice:
Linux (or BSD via Linux compatibility) and Solaris. And Linux is clearly cheaper.
Everything else (including Windows) does not even enter the game.
$22,000 for Windows? No... Read the Article... (Score:4, Informative)
That average of $22,000 per desktop was not for Windows machines. They were buying machines for their Unix developers to work on... Sure they bought the top of the range hardware from Sun/HP. I've never yet met a developer who would argue that they could do their job with a bottom of the line machine.
Z.
Re:$22,000 for Windows? No... Read the Article... (Score:1)
Re:$22,000 for Windows? No... Read the Article... (Score:3, Funny)
From a (former) Verizon programmer (Score:4, Informative)
While I had a P133 at home, we had 40Mhz sparcstations on our desk. 256MB RAM, 320MB HDD. Had to run most of our apps off of the UE10K in the data center if we wanted decent performance. Got busted for doing so, occasionally. Nobody had anything near top-of-the-line. Not even the admins.
It was actually a great environment to work in. The application architecture had been designed by Bellcore, the now-non-existant technology company for the Baby Bells.
The endian-ness cited in the article is mainly due to legacy sources. On the software front-end side, we never had to deal with it. (And I learned a whole hell of a lot about Motif) On the data side, though, we had to deal with endian-ness and EBCDIC-to-ASCII nastiness via a stupid gateway that just injected null into any byte stream that contained non-printable characters. Zero-terminated C strings don't like nulls. At least I got to do some Java.
Re:From a (former) Verizon programmer (Score:2)
I have an IPX with 48mb RAM that used to do NAT for the LAN, outside DNS (~200,000 req's/day), run scheduled backend maintenance scripts, AND act as an X terminal to my main machine... where it could do a number of XMMS plugins at 30fps across the network! The machine was amazingly responsive, even over SSH, with all this junk running
These days it's sitting idle, as I had to steal its second NIC for a faster DNS server... but I can't justify getting rid of it, since it can do 8Mbps as a fully stateful, scrubbing firewall
They were using Gold plated desktops of course ... (Score:4, Funny)
Now their computers are made of pressed particle-board.
Re:They were using Gold plated desktops of course (Score:2, Funny)
> Now their computers are made of pressed particle-board.
Now they're free, as in beer, speech, and old cardboard boxes.
Re:They were using Gold plated desktops of course (Score:2)
EASILY cost $22,000/workstation (Score:5, Informative)
These machines have been HPs Workstation line for a while, it looks like they were with HP, so yes, they're asving $19,000/desktop.
Re:EASILY cost $22,000/workstation (Score:2)
Linux can do many things well, but it can not replace some of the many features in a commercial Unix quite yet. I know it will soon, but not quite yet.
You obviously don't have a lot of experience in the real world. For some applications, especially a year or two ago, having a $3k linux box just didn't work. Linux didn't run the specialty software and wasn't robust enough a couple of years ago. For instance, many hardware design programs run on HPUX that do not run on Linux (not yet).
People that think linux can do everything a commercial unix can do are just wrong. Yes, I use and like linux, but I also respect its limitations. It is gradually getting to where it can replace most Unix boxes, but some times you need a commercial unux - whether your apps require it or you need a certain capability built in and supported.
I have worked on many C3xxx HP-UX boxes as well as linux boxes, and the C3600's are nice workstations. I don't think it warrants charging $18k more than a similar intel box, but it does. The PA-RISC architecture probably costs quite a bit more to produce because of the low volume, the itanium may change that quite a bit.
My point is, sometimes you need a real unix box. This is changing, but when you need enterprise support, applications, and features, you need them and that's all there is to it.
Re:EASILY cost $22,000/workstation (Score:2)
I completely agree that linux is very good for certain things, but it will be a little while before it will be capable of completely replacing HP or Sun workstations (for some uses).
Re:EASILY cost $22,000/workstation (Score:2)
I like working with the workstations too. Especially now that HPUX runs Ximian Gnome.
Programmers and *Office? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:1, Insightful)
We are three weeks into a new project which I am the lead developer for. In the last three weeks I have produced four documents in openoffice. One for the high level design 60 pages, one for the hardware requirements and procurement 20 pages, one for the client user documentation ( what they will be getting ) 40 pages and one on how the software will impact the business model which will use the software 20 pages. Each one of those documents will be updated with each acceptance test. Openoffice is my friend :)
omico--
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:2, Insightful)
Some things that lowly developers have to write are External Interface Specs, Design Specs, Statements of Work, etc. They even often want it documented before you start coding, but it isn;t enforced since prototyping is allowed.
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:1)
Well, take heart: you probably make a lot more money than me. :-)
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:5, Informative)
Besides MS Office files, my current nightmare consists of Lotus Notes, the single worst computer application ever written, and Photoshop. Thankfully, Office, Notes and now Photoshop all run under Crossover Office.
And right after you figure out how to use a VPN to log in from on the road to check your email, some bozo, possibly the CEO, will send out a 50Mb power point presentation with sound and cutesy clip art and animations to tell you what could have easily fit in a 1K ascii text file.
Quick! Plug it back in before the bits leak out! (Score:3, Interesting)
You're spot-on with this. People are rarely kind to a network.
I once worked for a Fortune 500 company who put our entire division (only 160 people; we where the smallest in the company by a factor of 10) in its own building way far away from the rest on campus. They signed the lease on the building and began build-out before they realized that the big cemetary and canyon/bridge between us and the Home Office prevented any sort of digging a trough for a fibre run. So they gave us this line-of-site microwave transceiver (dunno what kind, beyond that is was the flaky kind) to put on the roof which would talk with another one on a building that was on campus. The microwave link was supposed to top out at 10mpbs, but I don't think we ever got more than 5-7mpbs due to the long range, fog, birds, whatever.
You think that would be enough for 160 people, right? Not a chance. What most people didn't know was that all the mail servers and windows shares and Unix file/print servers and everything but our desktop machines were on the other side of that link. It made for a real tragedy. And most people were really oblivious as to why this was bad and why you had to be polite to the network. They couldn't grasp that the little blue wire wasn't like the power cord going into a desklamp. I can safely say that the nicer someone's hair, the more likely they meaner they were to our network link. We used to joke that at times we'd probably get better bitrates with two cans and a string, yelling ones and zeroes at each other...
You'd get some half-wit trying to print his 340 page PPT presentation himself in full color (instead of send it to the media center) and mail would slow to a crawl. Mail itself was another excercise in futility. The S&M (that's sales and marketing for the previously mentioned "garage shop" types) folks loved to email big PPT files as attachments to six or eight mailing lists at once. They'd send meeting notes as Word docs, each with graphic headers and footers of the company logo and address, and everyone would have to annotate them. It was almost funny to see them get all confused when people's edits would conflict and the head honcho would have to email out 6 or 8 versions for an eyeball diff. The art department would often print big tif file proofs, in color, rather than look at them on-screen. The web guys were always ftp'ing stuff to the ftp servers, updating web sites stuff, etc. Trying checking in 150MB of source while all this is going on. Now imagine the hilarity of trying to do it when the frog-in-the-blender exe is being re-re-re-remailed to you. I used to save network-related work for lunch or really late in the day when everyone that didn't know what the word "bandwidth" meant was out golfing or getting their hair waxed or whatever it is suits do when it's after 3pm and time to leave work.
The one incident that made it all worth it for me was this one time when a guy came to me asking if I'd burn a CD (I had the only burner) of all ~400MB of his new artwork/media kit/.ppt/.doc stuff so he could drive it over to main campus for some meeting/deadline he had. When I asked why didn't he save his work in a shared folder or something, he said that he tried, but the "network is down and IT says it works so they won't come out and fix it". Turns out that he tried to save his stuff to a share and found it very slow, so tried again and again. And then he tried saving to another shared folder, again and again. Then he tried ftp'ing it three or four times when emailing it to a cohort on main campus was also "taking forever". No matter what he tried, the network was slow, so he figured his only recourse was sneakernetting it over to his meeting or whatever it was he had going on. His copying this file 15-20 times slowed our link to a barely-noticable crawl. My ssh sessions reminded me of way back when I had a 1200 baud modem. I think I was in the middle of a daily build or something, and knew check-in would take 8 hours. So I burned his CD for him and then quit for the day without telling anyone why I was leaving.
I wound up working from home a lot once I got a cable modem.
-B
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:2)
I've been in the "fun to work, high pressure, do everything your self, personally rewarding" high stakes game of small startups, and I've been in the boring stodgy world of big companies with massively inflexible procedures and billions of pages of required documents. And I've been in the massive chaos when the small start up gets big and hires a bunch more people and everybody starts messing with everybody else's code and nobody knows what anybody else is doing and stuff gets done twice and other stuff doesn't get done at all and stuff gets lost because half the new hires don't understand CVS and so on. Trust me, after a while a bit of procedure becomes a good thing. Plus those sorts of companies rarely tell you that they can't meet payroll this month, but stick around and maybe we'll pay you next month.
Now I program at a big well funded company to keep my daughters in college, and I fiddle with open source in the evenings for myself.
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:3)
I'm starting to think that I really haven't been living in the Real World, but it sure feels real. This must be that Matrix everyone's talking about.
Sometimes I think of how things could have gone differently if I hadn't come here, and I wonder if I should have taken a different path. It hasn't always been easy, and the pay is ... eh. Then I read about what corporate guys have to go through, and my former thoughts about "it hasn't always been easy" seem so petty.
Maybe I'll change my mind if I ever grow up. That'll be the day!
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:2)
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:2)
blockquoth CustomDesigned:
You are misinformed, then. Of the three notable open source IMAP servers, cyrus, courier-imap, and uw-imap, only one keeps messages in a flat file in /var/mail (uw-imap).
Perhaps you meant "My post was a dig against an open source IMAP server"?
Re:Programmers and *Office? (Score:3)
non-proprietary format that everyone can read.
And HOW exactly is HTML a "non-standard proprietary format?" I believe it's pretty well documented on w3c.org.
Jeez, this guy's a moron, all he needs to do is add a line such as
text/html; lynx -dump %s ; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html
to his mailcap file and you can use lynx to read html mail. No reason for all the file-format hate, man.
Savings. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm surprised they didn't just fire all the programmers, to save the maximum amount of cash.
--saint
(bitter ex-Verizon employee.)
Re:Savings. (Score:2)
The programmers were the ones who replaced you with a very small shell script. Maybe someday they will find someone who can replace the programmers with very small shell scripts. Then they'll fire the programmers.
Verizon to Microsoft.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Verizon to Microsoft.... (Score:1)
They probably include... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: They probably include... (Score:3, Informative)
>
Others are making a good case that the price was the HP hardware, but here's an interesting factoid I'll plug in here anyway:
About a decade ago there was supposedly a study saying that it costs companies $15K/desktop/year to run PCs, with the biggest part of that cost being the lost productivity from having low-paid secretaries and clerks constantly running down the hall and interrupting high-paid engineers etc., to get help on some trivial computer task.
Re:They probably include... (Score:2)
Re:They probably include... (Score:2)
-jerdenn
Re:They probably include... (Score:2, Funny)
$22k boxen (Score:2, Insightful)
+ PC
+ monitor (or two for really cool developers)
+ Windows 2k pro + Office Pro + Visual Studio Pro + development library licenses (which can get really expensive like +$5k)
+ Unixish sofware licenses - software to make Windows boxes perform the tasks of Unix boxes, even simple things long GPL'd can get really really expensive think $500 for grep
With all sorts of proprietary per-user licenses (especially dev tools licenses) it's easy to see how a workstation could get up that high. Similarly, considering all the tools and libraries available under the GPL, you can put together a damn impressive dev platform and save yourself a raft of cash...
Re:$22k boxen (Score:2)
Re:$22k boxen (Score:2)
Re:$22k boxen (Score:2)
Re:$22k boxen (Score:2)
So all of the sudden, support is no issue for Winlots anymore?
You probably could fix up a Windows-machine with cygwin to do some simple Unix-development, but setting that up is quite time-consuming and expensive.
Re:$22k boxen (Score:2)
What will MSDN help you designing Unix/Linux software for servers and mainframes?
No, despite what Microsoft has told you, a huge mega-cluster of 32Bit Windows boxes is rarely cheaper than a single server or a small cluster of real servers.
Re:$22k boxen (Score:2)
That $19K / workstation savings (Score:1)
DDB
$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft developer licenses can be pricey.
They decided to go with the Mac (which they already had) and linux (which they deemed a growing market). Later, when and if they got enough sales, they'd reconsider XP.
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you didn't know that developers can get every business and OS product that Microsoft makes for every international language in the MSDN Subscription [microsoft.com] on DVD for $2,500. Most US developers would only need the Professional subscription which is $1,200. That includes MS Office, Visual Studio and all the compilers, Project, SQL Server, SDKs, DDKs, every version of Windows since 95, and a year of updates. The MSDN versions of most products allow 10 licenses, which is plenty for most developers. The price of the Windows licenses alone far exceeds the cost of the subscription.
>> Later, when and if they got enough sales, they'd reconsider XP.
I don't know their application so I can't say for sure, but in most cases that's ass-backwards. You usually want to build your product for the biggest market first.
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily. What these folks were building was some fancy-schmancy high-quality sound-studio software. One of the problems with running such stuff on Windows now is that they all come with MS Media Player. When you run any of its components, any "non-approved" sound software simply dies and needs to be re-installed before it can be used again. If you want to be on Media Player's non-hit list, you need to license it to Microsoft. This means that you effectively lose the rights to your software, and Microsoft controls what you can do with it.
I wasn't privy to their talks with MS's licensing people, but I know the result was a minor bout of depression. This had a lot to do with their looking seriously at OSX and Linux. I also got the impression that, after they talked to a few professional sound people, they were even more comfortable with ignoring Windows and going with the other two platforms.
Anyone else have comments to add to this? Maybe it should be a new topic? Maybe it can all get rates flamebait?
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:3, Informative)
If this [google.com] is any indication of actual OS distribution, then XP is no where near the largest market.
Win98 43%
Win2000 20%
XP 17%
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
And do you applaud someone who lies to his friends about the cost of windows in order to further this "lee-nucks" thing?
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
A kick-ass PC: $3000
Dev. Kit w/everything you need from MS: $2500
21" Monitor: $800
Nice laser printer: $1000
Nice optical trackball: $80
This doesn't even add up to $10000 and I am being pretty generous.
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
I can believe $20k. It's a little high, but not that much.
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
Would you care to give some examples? I have been developing for Linux for the last five years and still have to spend a single buck on it. On the other hand, when you develop for m$, there's always one more library you need to buy, just to be compatible with something or other...
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
Hmmm
Well, one place they insisted on using ClearCase. That's *expensive* - and impossible to use right.
(Hey, that might get me a flamebait rating.
Re:$22,000 for Windows? Easy (Score:2)
Or you can use vi/emacs/kdevelop/etc... for your IDE, gcc, gdb (or one ifs front ends) etc... and do it for free.
I guess it comes down to knowledge level and requirements.
They're probably replacing two machines, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation of part of the article (Score:4, Insightful)
What the employee seems to be saying here is that there were issues in how their code runs on little-endian systems vs. big-endian systems.
What the employee SHOULD be saying here is that their code wasn't written properly in the first place, and could be properly described as "what a mess." And now that the code works properly on both little and big endian systems, Verizon is light years ahead from where they were in portability, and their code is better for it. Maintenance and future porting of their code will be far far easier, thanks to Linux.
22k? (Score:1)
Some people don't have the experience, or tend to forget, that purchasing managers can often shell out much MUCH more for equipment than DIY programmers/techies/geeks. I.e. I once priced a pile of computers for a job at ~2K each, but we spent about $5K each going with a brand name (which some people feel more comfortable with, particularly corporate types. Depending on what else programmers have managed to get, through their own managers, with an eye on what's left in the budget at end of year (spend it or they'll think you don't need all that and take it away next year). Windows development stuff costs bucks, which probably has something to do with Bill Gates & Co. having amassed that Croesus-like wealth.
Those who watch the pennies meticulously, but don't know a damn thing about dollars or what ethics are.
Where did the extra $22k go? (Score:3, Funny)
COST OF OWNERSHIP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:COST OF OWNERSHIP (Score:4, Interesting)
Then they bought another small company of about ten people, that used Dell laptops with NT, and had a Compaq server. They wound up under my care, and that tiny group monopolized my time like you wouldn't believe, with endless problems.
Then word came down from The Main Office in New York, that PCs were to replace the Macs everywhere in the company but the design studios. And after that, two full-time employees and an intern could barely keep up with all the computer problems, and I never knew the solitude of an uninterrupted lunch hour again, at least until I left for a better job.
The claim that Macs have a lower TCO has been borne out so many times by so many people like me, that I can't believe that *PCs* replace *Macs*. Though Microsoft has now started pissing off many of their locked-in customers badly enough that they might take a second look at Macs and endure the alleged pain of switching from entrenched products, and the job I have now will be all the more lucrative.
~Philly
Re:COST OF OWNERSHIP (Score:2)
I like OSX, but I'm a unix geek. Our designers hate it. Our management hates being charged $129 for an imcremental upgrade as well.
Bye-Bye Mac.
~Hammy
Re:COST OF OWNERSHIP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:COST OF OWNERSHIP (Score:2)
ha! (Score:3, Funny)
also cut is the MCSE midget attached to each windows workstation M$ somehow convinced that Verizon should buy.
Where did you think they get all the headcount for the Austin Powers movie trailer?
How about James Earl Jones in a penguin suit? (Score:2)
MS Office 'Faster' then StarOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay let's try to list the 11 'most frequently used operations' for word processing: Cut, Copy, Paste, File Open, File Save, Print, Bold, Change Font Size, Change Font Color, Create Bullets, Create Table.
I'll grant that Word is great for the last two, and is pretty quick at them. Plus they are functions that actually take more than a split second. But the other nine are not and can easily be done in seconds on either program. And when you then consider that MSWord Bullets and tables don't act the way you want them to act probably at least half the time, any savings from creating them quickly is lost.
(Note: my list is based on the common sense assumption that MS didn't include plain old typing in their list).
Hmmm (Score:2)
Split second? Har. Har. Har.
Re:MS Office 'Faster' then StarOffice (Score:2)
Now if MS or Sun were arguing that their pet WP runs at an acceptable speed on low end / legacy machines where their competitor's can't, *then* I'd care. As it is, both Word & SO chug like pigs on older boxes.
Re:MS Office 'Faster' then StarOffice (Score:2)
Re:MS Office 'Faster' then StarOffice (Score:5, Funny)
erf (Score:2)
differences in how processors treat numbers (Score:5, Funny)
Translation:
We were dumb and wrote endian-dependent code, such as accessing multi-byte numbers by loading one character at a time. We assumed the high-order bytes were first, but with the Intel processor, it's the other way around. So we had to go back and re-do it all over again. Don't worry, we'll find some way to blame management. They told us to write endian-dependent code; yeah, that's right.
Replacing real workstations with Pee Cees? Eeew. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that $22k was for a real workstation, like an IBM zSeries or an HP Visualize or a Sun Blade 1k/2k (Or U60/U80).
I'm a sysadmin at a large company and I've got a Blade 1000 on my desk (with Sun's 24" LCD + XVR-1000 video board, thankyouverymuch
Anyway, the LCD is somewhat excessive, but the workstation certainly isn't. I'm constantly compiling code and doing testing on my desktop -- I need a good, reliable piece of hardware that'll function under stress.
A cheap Pee Cee running some Yugoslavian 14-year-old's idea of a kernel?
Forget it!
The other thing that nobody mentioned is that that $22,000 workstation will probably last 6 or 7 years. Not so with that cheap PC.
I had one developer who was still using his SPARCstation 10 until less than a month ago when we replaced it with a spare Ultra 2. Why? Because it still worked. All he used it for was basically an X display via SSH into the development boxes....
Would the Dell-of-the-week from 1991 still be useful today? Somehow I doubt it.
You get what you pay for. And sometimes, not even that.
--NBVB
Re:Replacing real workstations with Pee Cees? Eeew (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice troll I'll bite with some simple math. Even if you replace the PC every year for 6 years say with a $2000 PC you've spent $14,000 so you've still saved $8,000 per workstation. Even at $3000 a PC you're going to save $1000 on every workstation, not as much but it still starts to add up.
Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say they are probably going to get all those PCs from a contractor. I used to work for a University that was on such a contract with Dell. They lease from Dell and get a huge discount on their $3000 workstations (don't remember how much), Dell replaces the machines every 3 years. Even if they are paying full price ($3000), That's 2 sets in 6 years time, $6000 per workstation.
I'll take the PC (Score:2, Informative)
On it, I ran XEmacs, Mozilla, Oracle, an complex XML/XSL based Java web application, two other Java applications that fetch and process data, and the usual desktop junk (gnome) without any sluggishness.
We put smaller 2450's in production to replace U80s and E450s with more processors because the Dell boxes ran our Java app a lot faster. (The web app was at least twice as fast.)
What Yugoslavian kernel? (Score:2)
Now, for *new* development, we use Intel machines with Linux, exclusively. From Dell, because they have the lowest prices for machines with reliable support and maintenance.
Our HP-UX guys hated Linux, until they actually sat at a Linux machine and tried it. Now they are thinking of ways to convert all our HP-UX applications to Linux.
pc ok, propriatory equipment still expensive. (Score:2)
Re:Replacing real workstations with Pee Cees? Eeew (Score:2)
> The other thing that nobody mentioned is that that $22,000 workstation will probably last 6 or 7 years.
And you will come to think of it as "a dog" before the first two years are up, just as for a PC.
Re:Replacing real workstations with Pee Cees? Eeew (Score:2)
The Yugoslavian crack was a nice troll, but I think you're partially right, at least, on the hardware end - Intel/AMD hardware gives very good cost/power ratio because of economy of scale, but there is some cost for it elsewhere for sure. That's not Linux' fault - Linux runs very happily on SPARC, PPC, etc.
Like it or not, the success of Wintel has conditioned people to think of computers as perishable goods that have to be replaced every year or two anyway - and with that assumption in place it becomes silly to buy anything else.
Re:Replacing real workstations with Pee Cees? Eeew (Score:2)
My mistake.
Isn't it ironic? (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting. (Score:4, Funny)
Comments on the article (Score:2)
It says "$20,000" not $22,000" (though they may have changed the story. It is C|net after all.
Air New Zealand plans to use 150 Linux servers per mainframe, but the company tested the ability to run 10,000 copies of Linux simultaneously doing real work, Care said.
10,000 copies on one machine. Damn.
On desktop computers, Houston said that StarOffice or its open-source sibling OpenOffice may be "good enough" for basic tasks but are harder to use than Microsoft Office. Microsoft's studies of the 11 most frequently used operations in Microsoft Office took on average 2.5 times less time than in StarOffice, he said.
1) Did anyone consider that, maybe, those users were experienced in MS Office and used to it'ss way of doing those things? Not that I think OpenOffice is better than MS Office (all things considered) but sheesh.
2) My grandmother finds OO easier to use. It doesn't try to guess what you want to do all the time and force you to go with it's idea. For example, making bulleted lists with 1-line separations is a PITA for an inexperienced Word user. It works fine in OO, and because many other things work the way she tells OO to do them, she uses OO exclusively despite having Office 2K. There are still the standard problems reading MS Office's format though.
OpenOffice does have issues...but (Score:2)
As a recent convert from MS Office to OpenOffice, I'll admit, OpenOffice has problems.
Namely, its hard to do a lot of common things and it loads slowly. This is not just "conversion pains". I've become accustomed to OpenOffice rather quickly, but the ways in which it makes you do things are just too long. The shortest distancess between two points is a straight line: A --> Z. Not A --> D --> B --> E --> Q --> N --> S --> Z.
That said, most of the problems with OpenOffice can be fixed by the user, if one isn't too lazy. Its very customizable, so you can define your own shortcut functions, and toolbars, etc.
Another big problem with OpenOffice is the spell-checker. There needs to be a spell-checker and grammar checker.
There are also some very nice things about OpenOffice:
1. It generally doesn't fuck you up. Usually, it won't automatically change what you type. If Itype in nip7p at the beginning of a sentence, that's what I want, not Nip7p. A word processor should not second-guess the user.
2. Word completion. Nice.
3. Pinnable stuff. Alot of things are pinnable, like the color selection menu.
4. FREE PowerPoint modifier: Impress. Why should I waste 300 dollars on PowerPoint when Impress is free?!
5. Its not MS. Has a good, GPL'ed license.
6. Can read/open/save many different file-formats.
7. Metric! Inches are out, centimeters are in. Ok, at least among us scientists.
8. Available on many diff platforms: Apple, Intel, AMD, Sparc. This is great if you work with Apples and PC's.
That said, all these good things are no excuse for OpenOffice's deficiencies:
1. User interface. It needs to be smoother. Commonly used things should be easily accessible, and right clicking should always bring up something useful.
2. Load/run time. I have a 1.1GHz computer, 256Mb RAM, 7200rpm ATA100 hard drive, and it takes 15-30s for it to load. COME ON. That's CRAP. You'd think it was written in Java or something. Any program which doesn't open nearly instantaneously on my machine is crap in terms of load time.
So, my advice to OpenOffice: don't worry about features. The features in OpenOffice are sufficient to 99.99% of all the users. The problem is making those features easily accessible, and making the program load/run faster.
Re: GPL'ed license (Score:2)
Be right back, I need to get some money out of the ATM machine to pay you for it.
Come on, if you're gonna make fun of the guy, go all the way!
heh. (Score:2)
i can see 22k happening easy
Endian issues.. (Score:2)
I thought the only processor that had reverse endian design to Intel's was the Sparc, not the PA-RISC?
If I'm right the guys here is talking out of his hat. If I'm wrong someone correct me and I'll eat mine:-)
Re:Endian issues.. (Score:2)
Everybody else is in common.