Bit-Smacker wrote:

o my original point, why would you be running a $500-$800 per license OS on a "budget off-the-shelf windows desktop"?

My apologies for being vague! My point was that the equivalent slipstreaming is done for XP/Vista/Windows 7 desktops as it is for the server images - that is that extended installation images are not a premium feature. Further, especially given that the tools to create them are available at no extra charge, one would expect deployments on any scale to have an in-house image to use.

Bit-Smacker wrote:

Most companies that are serious about making money will choose from those three server brands due to their track record of reliability and support.

True enough. Not all though - the Intel server platform is certainly a high end offering, with an excellent track record, and so is Sun - but they are sold with no OS/Solaris/Linux, not Windows.

There are RDP clients for Windows Mobile and iPhone - I don't know of anything for smartphones in general in the way that SSH clients (esp. PuTTy) are. Granted RDP is higher level than SSH, but a Linux system that has dropped to busybox won't be accessible via SSH either.

I'd agree that it is a somewhat odd comparison: as a fair few people have commented, the time to install and configure a system is not particularly relevant; and whatever the choice of OS, a production system would surely be set up by someone experienced in managing servers running that OS.

Bit-Smacker wrote:

n the case of HP servers, you use a Smart Start CD which embeds all required drivers for the specific hardware and selected OS into the installation source before the installation even starts. NOBODY does a raw Windows installation in a corporate environment unless they're using cheap hardware.

At this point, I'm afraid that I lose you. A budget off-the-shelf windows desktop will also come with a customised installation image, with any necessary drivers embedded, and at the same time, if you buy a server without a Windows license, it wouldn't come with such media - that doesn't make the server cheap or of poor quality.