I think it is a great network OS and is very reliable for server uptime, of course I work in a Netware environment and they recently went from 5.1 to 6.5 in our building. The new features of Netware 6 with iPrint, iMap (browser based map of printer locations so a user can select the closest printer, have it auto install, and start printing with ease), iManager, and others are easy to use, plus it is pretty easy to get people going with the client- you setup their accounts and scripts on the server then all they need to do is login on their local machine. I also get to hear the Novell and Microsoft engineers rant with each other sometimes and the thing that stood out is that many of our Novell servers have been up for a few years with no downtime while many of the MS servers need attention every few months. With other features like Groupwise and Zenworks, Novell is a good option to look into if you want something other than Microsoft.