Jay,
Your enthusiasm for Java, although commendable, I believe is misplaced. Java itself, is just a language/psuedo OS, Sun's aim is focused on selling more servers to power all those Java running NC's. It will be years before Java has any real bottom line payoff for Sun, if ever - and it is possible someone else, besides MSFT will co-opt Java as their own. If the NC's do sell, this would be great, as you must have a server somewhere in there to drive the little puppies. Sun, is very strong in this area and intends to be that server choice, if at all possible.
As a software engineer (read programmer/Sun Solaris SysAdmin/WebMaster) I can tell you I enjoy playing with Java, but it's not yet by any means what I get paid to do. I still do mostly C on a Solaris 2.x Sparc 20 (moving to Ultra's) so I can say Sun's not getting any money on Java from us. Besides, did you see the price on the JDK1.1? Free, but that Sparc 20 and Ultra I run it on, well, let's just say they're not cheap.
If they can deliver on the NC promise, the NC's would still have to be so low in cost (to compare with PC's) that the margins would be trivialized. Direct competition for the NC may emerge from Cyrix in the form of their low cost GX chips, even Intel won't play in that market, since the margins are so small. It's the server that butters Sun's (and investors) bread.
So speaking of servers, does anyone know if their company is planning on buying any of those new Starfire series servers, the ones that start at about $800,000 a box? |
