What is the relative merit of Novell OS? Thanx

I am not sure how much time you have or detail you want. Briefly and broadly: 1. Ease of Administration - Novell is faster and easier to administer than Windows 2. Security - I trust the security of the OS much more 3. Stability - Novell is an order of magnitude more stable than Windows 4. Maturity - NDS has been around for much longer and gone through multiple improvements 5. Design - Windows NT and much of 2000 Server is based (closely) on Workstation OS. Novell was meant to be a NOS from the start.

1) Right on. 2) Yep. Watchout for some extra services though::portal.nlm is nasty for instance. 3) Yes:thank goodness you didn't compare NW to anything but windows here though. Netwares renowned stability is very much tested when it tries to provide traditionally *nix type services. The tcp/ip and nat implementation are substandard. Groupwise is a mess. I will never, ever recommend Border Manager to anyone. 4) Yes, nds is very nice. Thank god for dsrepair. Keep your novell support connection subscription up to date. 5) Netware shows it's age too. But basically I agree.

When you are considering using Netware, go to Netware 6 immediately. This will sound like a promotional campaign Features: iFolder: kinda offline files from MS but this one kicks the hell out of the MS implementation. Go to ifolderdemo.novell.com for 10 MB free test space. native file support: connect with solaris, linux, MS, mac to Netware without use of Novell Client. 2 server cluster license: you can set up a 2 node cluster without additional license. Apache webserver,... This OS is real fun to work with, if you want something that isn't MS, and you don't trust the Linux support, definately go to Netware.