The inevitable has been happening the last couple of months, my windows XP machine has started to become slow and unstable and prone to crashing and was due for a reinstall. Never a task one looks forward to when you have a lot of software installed, much of which you do not have CD's for and have no idea where any of your driver CD's are either.
I had a spare machine sitting around on which I had installed Windows Vista for testing, and so I was about to bite the bullet and start using that instead of re-installing XP. Then a friend of mine suggested I try Windows 2008 server 64bit. He said he had switched from Vista and it was definitely a better experience and all of his software worked.
Well as I subscribe to the Microsoft Action Pack I had a copy of 2008 Server Std edition, so I thought I would give it a try, although I was very sceptical about all my software not only working in 2008 Server but also working in 64 bit. But as a web developer it is much more convenient to run a server OS and have to work within the limitations of your workstation. For one you will have a full copy of IIS at your disposal, so no need to go messing about with Apache if you don't have to, and to be honest the only reason to bother with Apache these days is a) because you are on Windows XP and have the 1 site limited version of IIS or b) because your live sites run on Apache. There may be some instances where you need a very specific feature of Apache, but for most people this is very unlikely as IIS has been able to do everything Apache can do for quite some time now, and with IIS7 you are more than spoilt for choice with new features and configuration options.
Recent Comments