[Shuie]

A computer is a tool for me. I don’t have an attachment to any specific brand or OS. Honestly, I don’t have any experience with the Mac stuff. All I know is that they look neat and are expensive. I’ve heard they are the cat’s ass for music, video, and graphics. I’ve never heard anyone endorse them outside of these 3 things.

We are looking at the possibility if ditching most of our Microsoft products in the future at my work. It’s more of an effort to cut costs (software licenses) than anything else. The current thinking is that Linux and Open Office and Mozilla can do 90% of what we need to do.

We run our distributed web based HR/Payroll system on NT servers using a Microsoft SQL server back end. This is something that we do not think we can change. UNIX/Oracle is the closest thing to a reasonable alternative for the app we are running this system on and we don’t have the resources to go this route.

I’m asking this because I honestly don’t know. How practical is a Mac based system for distributing a web based application that runs on a large database? Is the server technology available on a Mac to run a 250 seat network where the client machines are distributed between RAS connections, VPNs, and other remote sites throughout the country?