David Holden said: [snip] >> > As far as I know for version of Microsoft OS's your guaranteed >3 >> years >> > use of that OS and security updates are *free*. >> > (Yes I know microsoft and security are words that really don't mix :)) >> >> Secondly, Microsoft has the volume to sustain security updates on a >> $99-199 >> product. Red Hat does not. > > > Of course which is back to my original post, about the cost of doing > this, > assuming the WS edition (>3x179) again $99-199. Make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Microsoft's OSes in the $99-199 range are desktop platforms, so they only thing they can compare to is RHEL WS. Even that is a stretch because WS includes HTTPd and NFS servers. And an office suite. And a full development environment. Do I need to continue? If you want to compare anything to RHEL ES, then you need to start looking at Microsoft's Server OSes. Of course ES includes a proxy server, a NNTP server, an IMAP server, most likely a couple SQL servers, etc. In the end if you are trying to determine what to buy just based on price, you have no real applications that require one or the other. As someone else on the list pointed out the price of the OS in a number of cases is a small part of the total cost. More often then not the applications dictate the OS, not the cost. -- William Hooper
