Seeing how you have to move you servers off the current hardware anyway (and there is a lot of work just by doing that), I would compare the price.
1) Licensing pricing: (Not sure who is cheaper..probably Novell)
2) Operating System Support Pricing: (MS is probably cheaper..due to sites like this, availability of MCSE's, and free product support that MS provides [Service packs and software security updates, etc]
3) Third Party Software Compatibility: There are probably more third party software that is compatible with Windows 2K...due to its popularity.
As for the arguement of performance... In my opinion, Novell and 2K is about the same. Maybe a little more performance from Novell. However, hardware is so cheap right now. A Compaq DL380 (with dual Pentium III 1.2GHZ CPU + 1GB of memory redundant everything) is well under $10,000 with 3 year, 4 hour, 24/7 hardware suppport contract. So, buy a little more horsepower if you think you need it.
My guess is that Windows 2000 is the better option. It is highly supported by Microsoft. There is reason why most companies are moving away from Novell and towards MS.
You may want to place this same post on a Novell website for a good comparison. I know a little bit about Novell...mostly from my expiernces migratiing servers from NetWare to NT... But I am no expert on the subject.
I hope this helps..
Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2000
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