Those are very useful comparisons, especially for smaller businesses with tight budgets. I think to convince the larger companies or companies with a love affair with Microsoft, you'll need more data to convince them that Linux is the right solution. There are a number of things to consider when building a database-driven website. Security, as in firewalls, administration costs (remote admin of Linux as opposed to physical access needed for NT, or hacky and insecure software), scalability (purchase of additional servers), high availability services, service integration, such as LDAP services, IMAP services, etc. Has anyone here tried to replace hardware on an NT box? I know Zibby understands the difficulty I'm going to elude to. Whereas replacing hardware on Linux can as simple as powering off the machine, swapping the hardware, and powering up, NT has never been as simple. NT's Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) is largely inflexible. In order to replace a motherboard on an NT box, you must back the system up to tape. Shutdown the box. Replace the motherboard. Reinstall the operating system, and then restore from tape EXCEPT the device drivers (*.sys files). Frankly, I'd rather have to compile a new driver than have to reinstall an entire OS (which, with NT may take an excess of 8 hours). The difference in administration costs alone make the $7k+ difference in software cost seem like child's play. -- Chad "^chewie, gunnarr" Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 233 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20001019/12b2b92d/attachment.pgp -------------- next part -------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org