a paper I can't find...

[John Summerfield]

Tim wrote:
> Tim:
>>> And I'm sure that all the mainframe guys must laugh their asses off
>>> at businesses which have to go around updating hundreds or thousands
>>> of stand-alone terminals, compared to updating one server and doing
>>> nothing to all the dumb terminals. 
> 
> John Summerfield:
>> And those of us who know how to update masses of Windows systems will be 
>> laughing at people like you who don't.
>>
>> http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=wsus+site%3Amicrosoft.com
> 
> I'm quite well aware that there's techniques for central management.
> But whether someone really goes around personally doing it, or plays
> around with some form of central automation, doesn't negate the point
> that networked computers, like mainframes, simply don't have to do
> anything like that.  ;-p
> 
> A mainframe with dumb terminals still has advantages even over thin
> clients, which have to cope with getting different hardware to fit in.
> Not all thin clients are identical, you can end up with a plethora of
> configurations to handle them all.
> 

I'm well aware of mainframes too, I even remember the Bunch.

People I know of who use mainframes & dumb terminals seem to use Windows 
boxes and terminal emulators. It's what I used when i worked at a bank a 
while back, and when Mr & Mrs S were last at the (different) bank 
discussing loans, the "terminal" was labelled "Dell" and ran Windows and 
a 3270 terminal emulator.

AFAIK if one's writing programs for the latest versions of DOS and OS 
then one has to use ispf or equivalent to edit programs, and do all 
one's work on the mainframe, but if the mainframe's running Linux (quite 
likely), then it's hard to beat doing the development on one's actual 
PC. Mainframe CPUs are good at some things, but CPU-intensive work is 
better done elsewhere, and adding PCs scales better.

However, I find the greatest burden of updating software is not actually 
applying the fixes, but reviewing them, and mainframe or peecee, I'd be 
doing that.




-- 

Cheers
John

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