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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alok Sinha who wrote (17451)	6/29/1999 7:08:00 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 64865

Dear Alok, LINUX is a high-end operating system but it doesn't cost very much. My husband installed LINUX on his PC at work. The cost: $100.00. You can install LINUX for less but he wanted 30 days of free technical support which he never used. He chose STAR OFFICE version of LINUX. He got a CD and an instruction manual. There are other versions of LINUX on the market. You can even download it for free from the net. Butt, I would not recommend that you do that unless you are a real techie like James. The LINUX system at work comes with many office suites. Spouse did not like the mailer. however. So he downloaded a mailer named, "Call Me Ishmael" for free from the net. (Try buying MSFT office suite for $100.00) When he was shopping for his LINUX system, he discovered many other shoppers hovering around the LINUX area. He runs LINUX 100%. And he is very happy that he no longer has to deal with MSFT Windows at work because the MSFT Windows crashes were on-going and either he or a technical support person had to spend a great deal of time to sort out the Windows problems. Cheers, Mephisto

To: Alok Sinha who wrote (17451)	6/29/1999 7:40:00 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

But, chances of knocking Microsoft off the desktop at home and work are equally (or if not more) remote. With respect, Alok, I don't agree with this statement. On the contrary, I believe that Microsoft's supremacy on desktops is certain to end, and the question is not a question of "if", but rather a question of "when". I don't see Linux as the instrument of Microsoft's downfall. I like Linux and I run it myself. But it now looks mostly like a fad. Though it will have some success, it faces too many logistical problems to be adopted either by individuals or corporations in the volumes required to unseat Microsoft. But that isn't the main issue with Linux. The main issue is this: even though Linux is, in some purist's sense, a better mousetrap, in a few more years we won't need mousetraps any more. The small, inexpensive matter-energy scrambler that will painlessly and instantly scatter the mouse's quarks throughout the universe, will soon render the mousetrap a museum curiosity. People won't use them. (Sorry, that's a weird metaphor, but dinner's getting cold.) This is hard for people to realize because we all tend to imagine the future as a linear extrapolation of the present. But that's the short-term future. It won't happen this year or next year, but it will happen, that much is as clear as day. And Microsoft won't own the world when it does. Regards, --QwikSand