Re: OS-X vs. Windows

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Brad Jensen wrote:

> > But benchmarks make me think of something:  does anyone have any idea how
> > iSeries, linux, and *BSD stack up when run on similarly priced hardware?
> > My boss is getting a new iSeries for about $20,000 (not including
> > software).  If I bought a linux/*bsd capable machine for $20,000 how would
> > they compare?
>
> Can you find one that expensive? I don't know if BSD supports

If you have that much money I guarantee a vendor will show up with a
machine that costs that much :)

> multiple processors. You should be able to easily get 4
> processors, 4GB of RAM, at least 320GB of raid disk, and lunch
> for four people for $20K. With maybe enough left over for a good
> -well maybe a bad- used car.

Only 4 on intel hardware for 20K?  You could run it on Sun or SGI hardware
if you want good memory throughput.  I'm not really interested in hardware
comparisons but rather given the same amount of money for an iSeries and a
linux/bsd box what would the performance comparisons be (using whatever
hardware you can get for the amount of money)?

> BSD would kick the stuffing out of the AS/400, particularly if
> they weren't running tiger on OS/400.
>
> Of course, to make the comparison fair, you should use IO
> processors  such as digiboards or termservers for the PC. I
> should think you could run a minimum of 128 terminals on term
> servers at acceptable speed. Maybe double or quadruple that.

Okay, fair enough.  But most of the people I work with now run their
terminals over a network, either LAN or internet.  The twinax is almost
gone.

> Of course, I don't know what you would find for software.

I would port some our iSeries apps for the test.  But this is the
knottiest part of it.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com