Lists of features and drawbacks of current Athena Private Workstation implementation.

• AFS and through it access to a lot of third party software in AFS lockers
• Patches are applied automatically and the machine is kept with patches up-to-date
• easy to clean up and reinstall

• Not great as desk top for some applications:
  • Numeric power low for certain jobs : Intel boxes better
  • Graphic capabilities low unless SGI
  • Lack of Microsoft Office tools or equivalent
  • Poor UI interface for non computer scientists
  • Not great performance (DB applications, ..)
• Lack of control over the installation process :
  • what gets installed
  • how is the machine configured
  • non existant information about what is installed
• Lack of control over the updating process:
  • No control over which rev and what patches are on the system
  • Hard or impossible to apply needed patches if they are not installed by the Athena update process
• Hard to add drivers, 3rd party software:
  • Hard to install new drivers and software as the Athena update may invalidate changes to the machine. (Athena is stomping on customizations.)
• Architecture is overcomplex as you get all or nothing:
  • Kerberos may be detrimental at times
• Poor documentation on what is an Athena machine (architecture overview) how to do updates