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

To: Byron Xiao who wrote (18036)	7/22/1999 12:47:00 AM
From: paul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Yes, the discussion needs to be brought back into what's good for Sun and less so on the religious arguments although James serves as a valuable lightning rod (or perhaps village idiot) for the MSFT/Desktop vs. Sun/Network Computing arguments. Clearly companies like HP, NCR, Compaq, Digital, Unisys, Sequent, Data General and even IBM which is showing very poor growth in its hardware business havent benefited from the demise of "proprietary iron" relative to Sun and in spending valuable cycles trying to get Microsoft's, Fat, Buggy and perhaps ultimately irrelevant OS to scale they have lost valuable focus on the Network and the ISP, Service Provider and other emerging areas which use the internet as its primary delivery vehicle. If Sun embraced NT do you think they would be a better company? would their profit margins increase? maybe they would sell some $399 desktop computers (of course accesing a Solaris Server) but i would rather have them focus on building out the infrastructure of the internet and explore emerging technology like Java and Jini rather than fixing Microsoft's bugs and abdicating its "innovation' to Microsoft and Intel.

To: Byron Xiao who wrote (18036)	7/22/1999 12:59:00 AM
From: Hectorite	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

<<Now, with all these free PC coming out, don't you think these box-makers will try to avoid paying cost for the OS and starting to put the FREE Linux OS on those boxes???>> Yes, that would save the MS fee, but no, the free PC providers are not going to be loading Linux. Most of the customers lining up for the free PC offers barely know how to use a mouse. I was reading about one of the free PC outfits (I think its called DirectPC, in Philly) and they WAY underestimated the support requirements and had to abruptly scale back the rollout. (Some might say that was because they used Win98! ha!) Most people on SI don't understand the low level of computer illiteracy in the general population. The interface on a "free" PC has to be familiar, and for better or worse that is Win or Mac OS. Now, maybe there might be a market for a shell to ride on Linux that launches a browser, word processor, email...I don't know, just thinking out loud now....

To: Byron Xiao who wrote (18036)	7/22/1999 8:28:00 AM
From: Stormweaver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Now, with all these free PC coming out, don't you think these box-makers will try to avoid paying cost for the OS and starting to put the FREE Linux OS on those boxes Yes that is an alternative, however for the immediate and forseeable future (2 years) that's not an option. The other OS's (BeOS,Linux) are just not there in terms of non-techie end user friendliness. Also they won't be able to run MSFT written software; from an end-user's perspective Quicken and Quake as a couple of examples. Also device driver support is limited. End result is frustrated end-users calling for support and returning their machines ... or buying Win 2000 for them. Regarding eroding profit margins - that's true. PC desktop is highly competitive ... but who cares since I'm not talking about which one of DELL, CPQ or GTW will survive. I am talking about cheaper power on the desktop and low-end server arena which will put a serious crinkle in SUNW's plans for selling workstations and low-end servers. Why buy a SUNW workstation now - you pay twice the price as a fully loaded PC and have a limited amount of commercial quality 3rd party software. Also for the server why not buy an n-way intel box and run Solaris x86 or Linux if you like UNIX so much? If you want to run NT on that same machine in a year then install NT ... re-use that iron.

To: Byron Xiao who wrote (18036)	7/22/1999 11:07:00 AM
From: SecularBull	Respond to of 64865

Profitability may define the future landscape more so than what consumers desire. The self-consuming cannibalism of the sub-$1,000 PC is a great example of why thin clients may not be as widely adopted as some expect- not because there isn't demand, but rather there's no money to be made in producing them. Time and time again, we have seen that the best technology doesn't always win. Most of those times, it was either an economic consideration (see High Definition TV) or the ordination of the prevailing technology (see VHS vs. Betamax) by the powers-that-be (i.e. MSFT, IBM, CSCO, DELL, SUNW, WCOM, et al, in this case). At the very least, I would expect that thin client mass-adoption may occur on a much more drawn-out timeframe than many would suggest. IMHO, I agree with you about servers. High-end desktop and enterprise computing remains the sweet-spot of the industry. Regards, LoD