Sorry so late.

Errol wrote:

> I manage a medical supply company in Johannesburg - South
> Africa which currently has 6 stand-alone P.C.'s, (all old
> 486 machines).
>
> I want to upgrade all the P.C.'s to 200 MHz Pentium machines
> and install an 8 station  NETWORK.
> My question to you is this.....  What sort of network should
> I install ??  I would like to go for the most reliable
> system while keeping a sharp eye on the costs involved.

What kind of network you install depends on what the purpose of the
network is.   A network is used to share resources, drive space,
printers, modems, backup hardware.

> On the software side, I would like to know what System you
> recommend (Win95 or Win NT or MS BackOffice etc.).

You have three basic options for this Windows 95/98 peer to peer,
Windows 95/98 clients with a Windows NT Server or Workstation, or
Windows 95/98 clients with a Novell Server.

Windows 95/98 peer to peer:

This would be best if all of the software is loaded on each machine.
Printers can be shared or each machine can have an attached printer.
This is the absolute cheapest way to set up a network.

Windows 95/98 clients with Windows NT Server or Workstation:

The Windows NT Workstation will support up to 10 clients.  Windows NT
Server will support up to 2,000 clients with only one server.  The
biggest drawback of the Windows NT Server would be the hardware
requirements.  NT has a more demanding requirements due to is GUI
(graphical user interface).  But, the WordPerfect Suite for NT requires
you to have NT.

Windows 95/98 clients with Novell Netware:

Novell Netware is the preferred NOS (Network Operating System) for those
familiar with both Windows NT and Netware.  Novell does not require the
same hardware that Windows NT requires.  The performance on a Novell
network is superior to a NT network.

I would recommend using either Windows NT or Novell Netware if you will
be running programs not loaded locally, would like to store files in a
central location, and would like your client machines to operate at peak
performance.  Both Windows NT and Novell Netware have security features
that you can implement, a peer to peer network does not.

> The programs we are currently running are:  WordPerfect v6.1
> and QuattroPro v6.0, dBase 2 and 3,   Ascent (a DOS based
> accounting package) and Netscape v4.0.

Corel makes a Windows NT Server version of WordPerfect that allows you
to use as many copies as users attached to the server, the cost is
approximately $2,500.*  WordPerfect will be able to read all of your
existing files.  I would recommend against Microsoft Office because all
WordPerfect files would need to be renamed with a .WPD extension to use
them in Word and the conversion leaves much to be desired.  For any
software you  choose to upgrade you should be able to get the upgrade
price.

Just some food for thought,

Robert Kilroy
*I own stock in Corel Corporation
--
ICQ Number:  4249654
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