I believe that what you're getting at is the user can access the entire power of a larger machine if necessary, and this enables administration to streamline tasks based on patterns of usage, or demand. If everyone gets e-mail between 8 and 9 am then the machine is utilized for that task, and not "configured" for another task that is not being performed. If at 9 am everyone moves onto the main business of entering data,or mining data, the machine can be tasked to accomplish this in the most efficient manner, so that the user has determined how the system is being utilized just by their actions, and the administrator can intervene only if necessary. On the wintel side, your machine is a finite resource, probably underpowered for the task, and leveraging software and some server, that is overworked, to try to get work done.
The administrator has no alternative but to configure access to the server or servers to balance load etc.
In the end it seems as though the wintel system is underpowered for the job, and the Unix version is more than capable, and can be upgraded at one point rather than many in the DP example.
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