Re: [WinMac] NT Installs

thomas kase(thomas[at]accessio.com)
Mon, 02 Nov 1998 08:51:47 -0500

In a message dated 10/29/98 1:52:41 AM, gzak@sd61.bc.ca writes:
> >In response to a recent MacMarine posting about an NT install taking a
> >ridiculously long time (6 hours to intall on an Orange card in a Mac, with
> >the help of a technician to boot), I inquired of my colleague, Carl, as
> >to how realistic this situation was. He replied as I have quoted below. I
> >would appreciate any comments on his experiences <snip>.

In a message dated Sun, 1 Nov 1998 16:52:06 EST, CHoogendyk@aol.com writes:
> what Carl said sounds basically reasonable.
>
> the hardware problems are inherent with NT. the obsolesence of PCs is
> driven faster by NT refusing to recognize and work with anything that is not
> on their "blessed" list. I've seen people replacing and throwing out,
> wholesale, PC hardware components because NT wouldn't work with them - network
> cards, CD drives, etc. the "plug and pray" terminology is justified. the Mac
> is far better in this respect.
>
> on the other hand, if the PCs have already been on NT and are being upgraded
> from 3.5 to 4, that is less of a problem. in an environment going from Windows
> 3.11 or Windows 95 to NT, it can be a serious problem.

I agree with CHoogendyk@aol.com, NT is EXTREMELY picky about its
hardware preferences. NT5 (aka Win2000) in its latest beta iteration
has gotten even more so, beta 1 is easier to get to install than beta 2...

Betas and shipping versions aside, you'd better be using nothing but THE
most industry-standard vanilla stuff to be reasonably sure that NT will
work. IBM harddrives, 3Com or Intel NICs, Matrox vidcards etc...

We've had instances where we've had to go back 5 times to the store and
replace Adaptec 2940 cards until we got one that NT recognized!!!
I mean, Adaptec? That's about as standard as it gets, I thought.

Sometimes it boggles the mind. Like when we had to swap CD-drives
between machines to get combinations that would work... with IDE C
D-ROMS!!! That shouldn't happen!

To be fair, other times it installs really nice, click click click, options this
and that and you're done. Sometimes that is...

As always, you get what you pay for and the more your box says DELL,
Compaq or other big name, the less likely you are to run into trouble.
Collusion, coincidence or just better quality, sometimes I wonder?

A funny thing is that none of the above shakes my NT guru's faith in NT,
he just dismisses it all as bad vendor adherence to the NT hardware layer
or some other thinking-inside-the-box approach... Well, he's REAL good
with NT, so what can I say? I'll keep him ;-)

Have fun with your installations!

Thomas Kase
GM
  accessio.com inc., 33 south main street, #7, south norwalk, ct 06854
  phone: 203.866.4454 fax: 203.866.4546 ICQ #7993841
  email: thomas@accessio.com , web: http://www.accessio.com/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Nov 02 1998 - 05:55:26 PST