Hi all,
This message is actually a response to a question from David F. posed to me on another thread regarding a quick explanation of PWS. My own professional curiosity wasn't completely satisfied by the following answer, so I thought I would throw this out as a new thread addressed to all in case some else has better insights.

Using my own words - PWS is a scaled downed version of IIS that's probably best suited for developing corporate intranet web pages. (I was going to say this on the original thread, but it isn't often that somebody like me gets a question from somebody like David so I was happily inspired to do the research ;) )

Using words from M$ Mastering Web Site Fundamentals CD - "PWS can turn Win95 or Nt workstation into a Web server for publishing web pages. Also used to simplify sharing information on their corporate Intranets or Internet for all users. PWS is ideal for developing, testing and staging Web applications, as well as peer-to-peer publishing. Just like M$ Internet Information Server (IIS), PWS supports HTTP and FTP protocols, plus all ISAPI extensions and CGI scripts. PWS has been optimized for interactive workstation use, and does not have the system requirements of a full Web server such as IIS."

I am using the PWS that comes with FrontPage98 (instead of the one with VS) only becuase FP seems happier when I leave it autostart and show up in the system tray. I have been playing with personal web pages for almost 2 years, using Netscape tools, and was curious as to why all of sudden I needed a Server once I switched to using FP as my main html tool. The closest thing to a reason that I see so far is with my references to CGI stuff, I never knew for sure if they were going to work until I uploaded the webpage to my ISP space. But now that I'm using FP98 with a PWS running, as long as I'm connected to the internet FP98 doesn't give me a potential error warning.

Anyone else got a *reason* why you need a PWS?