I am just curious why people want a windows server. Would this because they want to run something special (I was thinking ASP). :cool:

Yes a lot of people still use ASP. I guess it's a prefrence. Plus a lot of schools are still teaching windows based languages. So once people learn that they stick to it. But now I see more and more schools moving to the *nix realm.

Webmasters that wish to use ASP, MS Access and MS SQL databases, choose the Windows operating system as their hosting platform.

Well, for me, my preference for Windows hosting is because as a programmer, I am familiar with the platform and do build Win-CGI/ISAPI for my clients with some functions which is windows supported. Also the development of Client/Server applications requiring Windows support too.

Until I am familiar with Linux, I guess I will stick with Windows for those.

I see, I just didnt know because I only do some design work and cgi programming. No applications or anything. Thanks for the replies :D

.NET and SQL Server are the only real reasons IMHO to switch. also, if you run a dedicated box, Windows can be a lot more powerful for client/server software.

Well, actually, you can use ASP on Unix; all you need is a parser. Raq's come with ASP standard. I would recommend unix hosting unless you have a specific need for something windows specific. The only reason I would use Windows for is MS SQL Server. It's a very scalable db and is, unfortunately, the only cost efficient db in its class regularly offered by web hosts. I know windows better than Unix, and do all my development on 'doze, but I recommend unix for one reason: reliability. It's very easy to crash windows, and to crash windows processes. So, if you're on shared hosting, and someone crashes a process, you're out of luck until the host gets it back up and running. I've even seen SQL Server go down for an entire day. On shared hosting, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole service. Sure, it can also happen on unix, but it's less likely. Why? Unix is kinda childproof. It's hard to hurt yourself. In fact it's hard to do anything with unix, but hey, once ya do, it keeps working. :alien:

We offer Windows hosting but I've found that lots of people request Linux hosting as well. It seems to be mainly developers or those who don't really know what Linux is that go for Windows hosting.

.NET looks like a very good reason to set-up a Windows box and I'm planning to do that soon as well as getting a RedHat box up and running.

David

We get alot of customers because they use Frontpage, and either have problems with the FP extensions on *nix servers or they just assume they need a Windows host.