Letters to the Editor

Mark Smith's Fast Forward: "The Soul of Windows Revisited" (September 2003, http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 39749) didn't provide a lot of actionable information. Here are my comments about how Microsoft treats its certified professionals: Microsoft doesn't just take its certified professionals for granted; the company deliberately makes keeping up expensive and difficult. Each premier certification becomes extinct, or at least dated, about every 3 years, coinciding with the release of the next great version of a Microsoft product. In addition, each year it seems we have more tests to take at a higher fee, and we need further classroom time (which is not affordable) to get boned up on the latest technology. (For the record, I am a Microsoft shareholder. I've also been an avid promoter of Microsoft products and technologies.) It seems to me that Microsoft could make an effort to establish more user groups. In addition, especially at a time when work is hard to come by, Microsoft could establish a clearinghouse for employers or certified professionals to find one another and waive exam fees for unemployed certification holders trying to upgrade their credentials. As a longtime user of Microsoft products and a certified administrator, I feel well ignored by the mother ship. I suspect I'm not the only one.

—John Sikorski
ski@cablespeed.com

I read "The Soul of Windows Revisited" and would like to give some insight from the trenches. I'm a Microsoft Windows network administrator and geek. I've been working, studying, researching, and attending seminars for the past 4-plus years. The message Microsoft is giving me is that in an attempt to increase profits, the company is decreasing the value of the computer network administrator. I attribute this problem to three factors. First, training is now a profit center. Technicians should be trained to deliver customer support service for a particular product. To deliver a good service, the technician needs to receive consistent training over time and needs to keep up with technology changes and updates. This training philosophy is being totally undermined by ads promising that for "$5000 you can get your MCSE in 5 days." This type of marketing has flooded the market with incompetent technicians. The systems administrator will soon be making $8 an hour.

Second, Microsoft is flooding the market with products. If you're a private consultant and can dedicate 10 hours a day to studying, testing, and evaluating these new systems, you might become fairly proficient in some or all of these changes. But if you're out in the field rebuilding a server, training users, setting up the executive conference room, and making this quarter's technology budget proposal to the general manager, you don't have time for this frenzy.

Third, the total cost of ownership (TCO) initiative hurts the IT community. The most expensive cost in a network infrastructure and computer-based business is personnel. Microsoft's TCO program is intended to eliminate my job. As always, greed exceeds integrity or loyalty.

My response to these three factors is to shift my training, concentration, and recommendations away from Microsoft, Dell, Cisco Systems, and Gateway. Instead, my emphasis is on UNIX, Gateway, and home-built PCs and servers because the general public isn't as familiar with these systems and products, resulting in the increased value and need of my services.

—Richard L. English
renglish@cfl.rr.com

Small Business for a Small Price?
In Fast Forward: "Small Business in a Box" (October 2003, http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 40040), Mark Smith mentions a 120GB Network Attached Storage (NAS) device with the Small Business Server (SBS) bundle for a street price of less than $1000. Can you tell me which manufacturer offers these boxes? I priced the lowest-end Dell machine imaginable (with no redundancy, 256MB of RAM, a Celeron processor, an SBS five-user license, no tape drive, and no monitor), and it came to about $1200. I would love to find a reliable NAS device for my clients for less than $1000, but I would need redundant hard drives and a way to back up the device to mobile media. Thanks for the article. Overall, I agree with everything that you wrote about concerning the applications you would recommend.

—Jared Shapiro
jared@infinitysol.com

Thanks for writing, Jared. In my research for this article, I found a Windows Storage Server 2003–based Iomega NAS 200m/160GB box for $999.

—Mark Smith

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