MAilbag - Letter to the Editor

ENT, Feb 3, 1999

Victim Nation Brouhaha

I am tired of the whiners complaining about unfair advantages that they perceive that Microsoft has on them.

Netscape has duped a lot of politicians [into believing] that Microsoft is locking up all portals to the Internet. Anyone who has any savvy at all knows that with 30 minutes of work using any of several tools, you can get to the Internet. This is another case of the press and politicians jumping on something about which they have

no clue.

I have written many times to politicians throughout the country. Most of the time there is either no response or a generic response indicating my mail has been received. When I wrote to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), I received a response stating that he will only respond to his constituents.

Microsoft is not perfect, but that could be [fixed] without this ugly thing going on in Washington. The Justice Department has a mission to destroy Microsoft, which is dead wrong. It is as though any company that is successful and reaches a certain size is evil.

Lynn Johnson

ljohnso@enron.com

I read in your Mailbag [Jan. 6, 1999] where it said that Microsoft does not harm people. I'll bet most of these people never installed Windows 95. When I estimate a job to a customer [to configure new systems] I leave an hour to load software.

Even when you tell the install

program not to load MSN [Microsoft Network] or other Microsoft products, it does it anyway - so I have to spend time removing these components, not to mention how many times I have had systems crash on the initial install.

I have to spend an average of at least one hour per day that I will not bill to my customers because of Microsoft products. No harm done - except to my pocket.

Jeff Sapper

Owner

OMS Inc.

Orlando, Fla.

Smack that Writer

About Bill Laberis' Jan. 6 column titled "Bridge Building 101," while the idea of making an explanation simple to understand is good, if I were your mother I'd smack you one. While my mom may not be up on the latest techno-jargon, even after her stroke she is a communications expert.

My sons have a mother who is an IS professional. I'd better not hear them talking down about my ability to understand technology.

Perhaps a better way of putting your idea would be to tell the readers to try their explanation on someone outside their area. I use secretaries and cashiers to "proof" my documentation for understandability. I think you may owe some mothers an apology.

Caroline Tangen

City of Boise

ctangen@pobox.ci.boise.id.us

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From One Bald Guy to Another

As a bald guy from East Tennessee, I feel a great affinity for many of the things Greg Scott writes about in his Jan. 6 column titled "NT without NT."

The college where I work has been an OpenVMS shop for many years. Like everybody else, we have lots of PCs and a few Macs - about 1,650 in total - and we have lots of NT servers. So a challenge has been to integrate the OpenVMS world and the NT world.

Our experience with integrating the new improved Pathworks into NT has not been as positive as yours. We have been unable, even with Compaq's help, to load our 10,000 OpenVMS user IDs into the Pathworks server. Compaq says it wasn't designed for so many user IDs. I am incredulous - if OpenVMS is anything, it is scalable, especially compared with NT.

Sometimes it seems as if we should phase out OpenVMS, but the college's administrative software will be on OpenVMS for at least five more years.

Jerry Bryan

Pellissippi State Technical Community College

Knoxville, Tenn.

jbryan@pstcc.cc.tn.us

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Disagrees with Mailbag

Regarding the Jan. 6 letter written by Kyle Tucker, I'm sorry [but I] disagree. I have over 20 years experience with large, clustered Unix systems. My original training was two years in networking and then two years in technical support on the operating system. The remaining time was hands-on managing of several development teams - up to 178 programmers and analysts, plus project leaders.

Today we have been operating under NT 4.0 for 21 months and we are doing more with one-third the staff it use to take - and with a lot less problems. The end users are happier today then they have ever been and our overall system costs have been reduced over 80 percent.

The secret is @@Iforget@@SR what you know about Unix! Educate yourself and your staff in NT 4.0, and you and your co-workers can reap the rewards.

George Jamison

Director Information Systems

Plymouth Inc.

Jamisong@plymouth-fun.com

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