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Letters

Apple Talk
I'd like to commend Steve Schuchart on his fair and objective review of the Apple Computer's Xserve (March 21, 2003). He did a good job of pointing out the product's pros and cons as they apply to its use in the enterprise. The Xserve will only get better as it matures and Apple gains experience in the enterprise space.
Dwight Munn

Vice President; MacAssist Co.
[email protected]

Thank you for the refreshing article on the Mac Xserve. I thought it was common knowledge that Wintel KVM switches don't work with Macs but many KVM manufacturers make products that do. As for the iBook that Apple sent you, the GUI with the Xserve is both useful and, I bet, a lot nicer than that of the Wintel laptop you're using.

Jon Wells
IT Administrator; Marion County Court of Common Pleas
[email protected]

I'm afraid I can't muster any sympathy for the gripe about requiring an additional Mac for graphical remote administration. It's something we Mac users endure every day when lazy developers advertise "Web-based" administration that turns out to be a single HTML page with nothing but a huge (and useless to Mac users) ActiveX control embedded in it.

Michael J. Stango

Senior Consultant; IT Solutions Consulting
[email protected]

Editor's Note: Many readers wrote to tell us that the Apple Xserve Steve Schuchart tested should have been equipped with cable-management hardware. They're right. Unfortunately, the unit Apple sent to Steve was missing this piece.

Filter Defined
I really enjoyed reading your March 21, 2003 review of application-level firewalls ("Smaller Net, Tighter Filter"). Why were products from BlueCoat, Kavado and Sanctum left out?

Ramesh Neelmegh
VP Engineering; Brillus Networks
[email protected]

Mike Fratto responds: We tested firewalls that support multiple application proxies. The BlueCoat, Kavado and Sanctum products don't meet that requirement. To read our review of Web application protection suites, see "Proxies Add a Protective Shield" (March 5, 2003).

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