Recommend the correct type of OS and processing capability......

Recommend the correct type of OS and processing capability for each of the following situations, providing reasons for your choice:

Clark works in the accounts department of a big production house. His job involves processing and printing salary slips for each employee.
Stephenie works as a project manager in an advertising company. Her work involves creating project schedules, interacting with clients/vendors on e-mail, and creating presentations.
Mary a database administrator manages a database server that millions of users on the Internet access.

The answer for all three would be
a.) *nix
b.) whatever hardware specs would be suitable, likely less than most would say. We're not talking about rendering full length movies or anything seriously CPU intensive.

For Clark, I recommend Windows XP Professional, with a low power Intel Celeron processor, as his work needs are relatively light, and Windows XP will give him the access to Microsoft Office, the industry standard for documents and salary/budgeting.

As an alternative, I would recommend CentOS Linux, with Openoffice.org, as it would require a less expensive computer, and can still save in .doc/xls/ppt format. However, Clark may not be used to the Openoffice program.

For Stephanie, I recommend Windows Vista, on a Core 2 Duo processor, 1.5 to 1.8GHz, as Powerpoint speed can be helped by a faster procossor. At the same time, Intel Core 2 chips of that frequency are inexpensive.

Mary, she needs a server. I recommend a single 64-bit Intel Xeon processor, but the main component affecting her speed is hard drive load time. For this reason, I would suggest 8GB RAM minimum, 7200-10000RPM Hard discs, and Windows Server 2008, as it has increased security, yet is an accepted standard.