PHP vs. ASP and ASP.NET

I'd like to start a programming discussion to compare the pros and cons of using open-source server software like Apache, PHP, and Linux configurations vs. commercial configurations such as IIS, ASP and ASP.NET on Windows platforms.

I'm doing a term paper on this subject and any contributions to this discussion would be greatly appreciated.

Starting off, I personally have found open-source configurations to be more cost effective, although they are certainly not free. My web host charges extra for ASP (last time I checked) and I'm not even sure if they have .NET configurations yet.

I'm still researching the efficiency and speed of PHP compared to ASP. I'm also curious about what others think about the security, scalability, and ease of programming for them. Of course, there's also ColdFusion and JSP to consider.

Just wanted to add that after doing that term paper and researching C# and ASP.NET, I still think PHP works the best for most applications.

So... now... the big question is (looks at Lynx for some reason):

PHP5 or PHP4?

Ugh. I could go on a tirade about how everybody is making this transition to ASP.NET but it would involve quite a few curse words and we wouldn't want that now, would we?

You know I've been a long-time fan of PHP, although most of what they have me doing involves C# as of late.

Personally, I think PHP5 and ASP.NET are tied neck and neck as far as features and speed, although the stuff we work on is strictly intranet and doesn't get really high traffic.

Your high traffic stuff is probably going to do better on one more than the other, though it depends mostly on how it's coded. I've seen some s*** code for both platforms and it ran horribly in both cases.