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

To: Prognosticator who wrote (19698)	9/16/1999 3:20:00 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

StarPortal will make many of the current support issues non-existent (installation, configuration, proxies, crashes etc), so I'm not unduly concerned. I agree. But when Sun acquired Star Division I made the comment that there are a million ways they can screw up the execution of the whole Star strategy. One of those ways is to let Star Office get a bad reputation between now and the time Star Portal is a customer-pleasing service. As Sun's name creates a much larger Star Office customer base by increasing the number of free downloads, if Sun lets support capacity get too diluted, then many of the necessarily more naive users in a larger base will get pissed off. Microsoft's support is not so great, but it's not so bad either. If Star Office develops a rep that no one can use it but geeks, that you get what you pay for, that support consists of a mailing list (I mean, even Red Hat does better than that!) etc., it's a big minus. I realize Star Portal's success will depend mostly on the backing of ISP's and other factors, and it can still succeed even if Star Office somehow turns into an albatross. But I hope Sun's management is smart enough not to let that happen. Regards, --QwikSand

To: Prognosticator who wrote (19698)	9/16/1999 4:49:00 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 64865

Dear Prog, As I mentioned my husband didn't get very far with Star Office technical support. My husband installed Star Office LINUX by himself but he doesn't have time to keep the system up and running. Mark G. Sobell has written several books on UNIX and LINUX. My husband bought Sobell's Solaris book yesterday. Last night when he perused the Sobell book he made nice comments about what Sun has done or is doing etc. He seems to think that the book is clearly written. If you don't have a copy of Sobell's book on LINUX, maybe you would want to have a look since you mentioned: We're considering Linux for our desktop machines, but installing it is not trivial. For others who may be interested, my husband bought: A Practical Guide to Solaris by Mark G. Sobell, Copyright 1999. Book covers: .Solaris 7. Cover says the book is for" beginning and experienced users and C and shell programmers using either a command line or GUI Interface. .Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). "Learning and Using the X Window System and the CDE and OpenLook desktop managers. Offers extensive discussions of CDE and X customization. . Networking, the Internet and the World Wide Web etc. .Shells. Describes how to use the Bourne (sh), C (csh) and Korn (ksh) shells as interactive command interpreters and as programming languages so you can write shell scripts etc., etc. . System Administration. Covers system operation from SPARC PROM model/booting an Intel x86 through multi-user modes etc. .Programming Tools and Concepts. .There are examples, tutorials, Appendixes and Glossary. .Mr. Sobell has a web site that will help you locate Solaris documentation. The cover says that Mr. Sobell has more than 20 years of experience working with UNIX and Linux. As far as I know we could have his Linux book. But I don't see any Linux books sitting around in the clutter on the desks so I imagine my husband has them at work. Mephisto