Windows doesn’t live here anymore

My world has been turned upside down during the past year. As I write this story on a 12-inch PowerBook, I’m migrating several gigabytes of applications and data files from my 15-inch Titanium PowerBook G4 to the 17-inch aluminum model. The standard Bluetooth, Airport Extreme wireless, and the larger display proved more alluring than the convenience of sticking with the machine that’s now wired into my brain.

My wife chides me for carrying a PowerBook everywhere I go. My editors are sick of seeing mention of the Mac in almost all of my columns. My 18-month-old son walks around the house babbling “Apple-Apple-Apple-Apple.” No fooling. I’m busted. I’m going to quit pretending I have much use for Windows client machines except for research. Nobody believes me anymore.

My PC research is still relevant. PC notebooks are getting touchscreens, wireless, and low-power CPUs from Intel and AMD. Intel’s fascinating Hyper-Threading now extends from the dual Xeon server in my rack to the 3GHz Pentium 4 desktop that sits under my work table. The new portables in my lab from Gateway and Fujitsu are practically ideal high-performance and thin/light PC notebooks. Modern x86 systems are amazing, leading-edge technology. As a journalist, I can’t turn my back on it.

But I am turning away from two core assumptions: that all x86 machines are destined to run Windows and that all worthwhile entry-level servers, business desktops, and serious notebooks use Intel CPUs. Current statistics show these assumptions to be accurate in the majority of cases, but after watching trends for several years, I believe the tide is turning. I’m also pragmatic enough not to care which way that tide turns. I’m also pragmatic enough not to get washed away by it.

The two Windows servers that are presently the hub of my network — the sacred production boxes that serve my directory, mail, Web, streaming video, database, and applications — will soon be gone. I’m replacing them with Apple Xserve machines: first a solo box and then a two-machine cluster after I get that first machine set up.

I’m going to do everything I can in OS X Server’s BSD layer to avoid getting hooked on facilities peculiar to Apple’s software. At least for now, it’s important to me to be able to migrate easily to another Unix platform. The Unix server segment is in too much flux to get stuck in one architecture, and I’d take the same care if I started with a SPARC or Power machine. I’ve intentionally beaten the daylights out of the Xserve I’m configuring and I haven’t the slightest doubt about its reliability.

My Xeon and Opteron reference machines will still play a central role in evaluating enterprise software and peripherals. They both have solid lights-out management firmware that wakes them up when I call them and redirects their consoles to the network. They triple-boot into Linux 2.4, the experimental FreeBSD 5.0, or Windows Server 2003. Getting all of these pieces playing together will be a valuable learning experience, but it’s more than that. This is the kind of network I’d build if I were managing IT operations.