Letters: Firewall Flap

Adrian Peters replies: Although I can't speak for your tests, I can assure you that we subjected all the firewalls in our review to very high stress. For every test we conducted, each firewall ran the same gauntlet at least three times. We left it to the vendors to provide the appropriate hardware and configure the firewalls.

We pushed throughput and state tables to the limit, with firewall rule sets averaging 100 rules each. A simpler network architecture with fewer clients would have yielded different results.

OS/2 Fan

I must take issue with Tim Wilson's less-than-flattering description of OS/2, IBM's former rival to Microsoft's Windows ("One OS Is Enough, Thanks" July 21 ).

True, OS/2 deviated from the more familiar Windows/ Mac shell environment, making it a bit harder to learn. But contrary to what Wilson says, it was not kludgy. Moreover, it was way ahead of its time, boasting features Windows still lacks. Too bad IBM's inept marketing and the absence of application-developer support killed OS/2 before it could become the dominant desktop operating system.

Freedom of choice is one of this country's most fundamental values, yet we don't have it in the desktop arena. It's either some version of Windows or Linux--and as we all know, Linux is still not for the mainstream user. Even for advanced users like myself, Linux can be a real pain at times.

What's wrong with giving desktop users more choices? Had OS/2 taken hold, I'd probably be using it instead of Windows XP.Charles Brewster
Network Technician II
Company name and e-mail address withheld by request

PDF Convert

Your Web site's PDF-conversion feature is great for sharing articles with my peers. Thanks for providing that functionality. It really sets your magazine apart.Mark Griep
Network Administrator
Fidelity Bank
[email protected]

Corrections

In "BlackBerrys and Treos and iPaqs, Oh My!" (July 21), the "Mobile Messaging Gateways Vendors at a Glance" table should have said Research In Motion reported $454 million in fiscal Q1 2006, up 68 percent from Q1 2005. In the body of the review, we should have stated that clients accessing RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server 4.0 can search the Exchange Global Address List for message addressing. BlackBerry Enterprise Server lets you download the full contents of many attachments in addition to viewing them one section at a time. And, like Good Technology's GoodLink 4.0, it lets you set out-of-office messages from a handheld.

In "Right Place, Right Time" (Aug. 4), the "Intelligent Fibre Channel Switch Features" chart contains inaccurate data for Cisco Systems' MDS 9506 Multilayer Director. We've corrected the chart online.Tell Us How You Really Feel

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