Windows is well known to grind hardware down to the bone and make it fail. See PC Magazine, Maximum PC, and most mainstream press for that. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is much lower than that of Linux, or even OS/2!
Thus, it fails more often, requring fixing and eventual replacement... which gets into the budget... which is already overtaxed because Windows XP Pro itself is $300 when Microsoft has stated (to the SEC) that most of that is pure profit. A submitter to Slashdot has said that Microsoft could sell it for $45 and still make a profit. (I can't say if Microsoft is doing a good, legal thing or not by charging that much.)
So? You go with Linux or FreeBSD (hell, go with any free *BSD out there, I don't care, it just handles the hardware better). You save once. Your hardware goes farther w/o mainance & repair, and when you do maintain it/repair it, it's light stuff. You save twice. You get alot of money for your investment. You save three times, and are still online!!!
OS is an issue here.
Windows is well known to grind hardware down to the bone and make it fail. See PC Magazine, Maximum PC, and most mainstream press for that. The Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is much lower than that of Linux, or even OS/2!
Thus, it fails more often, requring fixing and eventual replacement... which gets into the budget... which is already overtaxed because Windows XP Pro itself is $300 when Microsoft has stated (to the SEC) that most of that is pure profit. A submitter to Slashdot has said that Microsoft could sell it for $45 and still make a profit. (I can't say if Microsoft is doing a good, legal thing or not by charging that much.)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/17/2037223
So? You go with Linux or FreeBSD (hell, go with any free *BSD out there, I don't care, it just handles the hardware better). You save once. Your hardware goes farther w/o mainance & repair, and when you do maintain it/repair it, it's light stuff. You save twice. You get alot of money for your investment. You save three times, and are still online!!!
I think I'm going to do a hosting service now...