Just because it works

I did a walk through for a customer to evaluate their infrastructure and see where it could be shored up. They've been having intermittent issues so they tapped us to consult.

This place was a train wreck! Almost every aspect of it was in dire need of a overhaul. We're talking almost complete redo to get it up to par, the only thing salvagable was the wiring (and even parts of that were suspect!). Spit and wishes if I ever saw it, of course 100% M$ everywhere.

When I explained this to them, they of course balked. "Oh, we don't need anything like that, for the most part it's working, we're just having some minor issues that we need to have fixed up."

The problem was, without getting into details, the "small issues" they were having were as a result of the major issues. Frankly it was a miracle that they were functional at all IMO. From what they said, they've had other issues like this in the past and usually their designated "computer guy" was able to resolve it. Not this time though.

So now the cracks were showing, and they just wanted a quick patch job to fix it up. Sure, we could do that, but it's not going to resolve your issues, they'll just keep getting worse and worse until total failure occurs. Spend a bit more up front to get everything working right, and you'll end up saving in the long haul with what you would have spent on recurrent patch jobs.

Anyway, I shared that to say that just because something might be working doesn't mean it's not broken. For instance Windows, it may work for what you want it to do, but it doesn't mean it's not inherently faulty. Emminently, it will fail, it's just a matter of when and how much it's going to hurt you when it does.

This is why if one has any concern or need for things like stability, reliability, security, and hbuttle-free computing, using Windows is probably the worst possible solution. It may work, but for how long? How much will it cost over the long haul to keep it up and running or to fix it when it does go down?

Systems like Linux OTOH, are a much better candidate. They may be a little bit more to implement in terms of up front costs, but what you save in time, money and hbuttle long term more than makes up for it. Once a Linux system is properly setup, it stays that way unto perpetuity or until the hardware take a dive, whichever comes first.

So the choice is either use something that works but is broken, or something that just works. Pretty much a no brainer to me.

-- rapskat - 00:18:22 up 3 days, 5:25, 5 users, load average: 0.45, 0.37, 0.26 "Of course my pbuttword is the same as my pet's name. My dog's name was Q47pY!3$H9x, but I change it every 90 days." -- Ken Pfeil