Re: SQL server Vs Oracle

Stephen Harris (sweh_at_mpn.com) wrote:
: Arvin Meyer (a_at_m.com) wrote:
:
: : The last rollout I participated in was for 40 laptop machines with imaged
: : hard drives. It took 2 folks in IT 10 hours to burn the drives and do the
:
: I hate to tell you - 40 laptops is miles different to 500 users - including
: managing data migration from old desktop to new desktop (yes, lusers put
: data on their own machine, not on server).

If you've got 500 users you should be managing the desktops better.

Period.

[]

: : I'd wait for NT 5 (Windows 2000) and take advantage of network install
:
: As someone else has mentioned - W2K won't be stable until 2001 or 2002 at
: the earliest. Anyone who uses it before then.... agh!

I say that because I'm an incredible pessimist about W2K. When did NT4 come out? Which service pack made it stable?

I think W2K is going to be MS's downfall, but I've said that before.

: : and you should be able to rollout 30 to 40 a day with 2 IT folks. I'd use
:
: Nope, absolutely not feasable. User handholding is a requirement when they
: are given new machines. You say 15 per IT man per day... 7 working hours,
: so at least 2 per hour... 30 minutes per machine? Ha! Totally impossible.

Training is an issue I left out of my survey of costs.

The more often you throw out cheap PCs or have to upgrade them to keep them limping along to the 3-year goal, the more training, hand-holding, user interruption will be involved.

Buy machines that you basically won't have to touch for 3 years and be done with it.

Right now, that means 128MBs RAM, 10-16GB HDDs and PII400 CPUs. That's $2,000 per PC for the rollout (including hardware and installation).

That's an incredible bargain, it seems to me. If those are properly managed desktops, they should easily last until the next upgrade cycle.

Face it, PCs are consumables, just like copy paper and toner.

--

David W. Fenton                        http://www.bway.net/~dfenton

dfenton at bway dot net                http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc