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From: jpq@laue.ms.nwu.edu (John Quintana)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: Sun PC-NFS deficiencies
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.075917.1547@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 91 07:59:17 GMT
References: <1991Mar14.015814.1341@amd.com> <2623@travis.csd.harris.com> <1991Mar14.202556.6734@phri.nyu.edu>
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News)
Organization: Northwestern University, Mat. Sci. X-ray Lab
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Look, I probably shouldn't post this, but I'm sick and tired of what I
see are fairly petty things.  First, we ran NOVELL crap for a while and
I had to dedicate a 386 machine to run as its server.  This didn't bother
me too much except for the fact that there was a bug in the NOVELL serial
port handlers that prevented me from using its serial ports in a mode that
my peripherals needed  (we were using 2.15 b if anyone is interested).
Then along came SUN with their SparcStations and we purchased PC-NFS with
all of its claimed deficiencies in terms of lacking pretty windows and 
grand user interfaces.  What can I say, it worked.  We could do file sharing
without a lot of privledge garbage which the NOVELL menu system hid from
me, and I was able to use all of my external devices.  Yes, we were using
SparcStations anyway, so using PC-NFS was somewhat of a boon.  Yes, there
are still some problems.  Would I trade it back for NOVELL.  NOT ON YOUR LIFE.
For those of you who talk about the "whole picture", lets talk about support.
When I call SUN regarding Technical Support, I get a Technical person.  When
I called NOVELL, I got the run around.  SUN didn't even ask me for my credit
card number like NOVELL did.  Look people,  if you want fancy windows, you 
can add them to PC-NFS or any of the other packages with a modest programming
effort.  No TCP/IP involved, just some password encrypting.  Also, with NFS,
I'm not locked into some bizarre proprietary scheme like NOVELL.  I can 
purchase PC-NFS from several different vendors.  Oh, and by the way, I got
my 386 machine back.  

- John