Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!necntc!drilex!dricej
From: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <489@drilex.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 21:54:15 GMT
References: <1636@tulum.UUCP> <3168@phri.UUCP>
Reply-To: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Organization: Data Resources/McGraw-Hill, Lexington, MA
Lines: 22
Summary: How about the big time?

One reason why these Unix vs VMS wars come up so much is that they're fun.

Anyway, here's my perspective:  For a university, quite likely that Unix
is better.  A university is likely to be able to get technical talent
cheaper and to have more of it.  It is also less likely to be doing
large-scale computing, with lots of disk, tapes, etc.

I think that VMS's real strength is in the latter area.  It isn't as
oriented toward mongo Data Processing as IBMs, etc are, but it has 
better facilities than Unix.  VMS also becomes a real choice if you have
to do a lot of record-oriented I/O--something that Unix hates.

When I mean mongo, I mean when you get the 33rd Eagle or the 16th tape
drive... :-)

Sure, there are Unices which handle such things.  But the mainstream
of Unix doesn't; you've lost the 'non-proprietary' nature of Unix when
you go this direction.
-- 
Craig Jackson
UUCP: {harvard!axiom,linus!axiom,ll-xn}!drilex!dricej
BIX:  cjackson