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

To: Byron Xiao who wrote (19959)	9/20/1999 4:34:00 AM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

JDN- Here's how it works: You don't buy RedHat for $89. You buy the cheap Linux CDs and a couple hundred dollars worth of books. Then you spend hundreds of hours learning Unix (deliberately). Then, after you still can't get PPP configuration right (never mind sound) you go to a Linux Installfest and have a professional do it for you for a bag of cookies. At some point you realize, PCs are insanely complicated. Yes, this Linux is great as is the open source movement and you're learning all kinds of cool stuff instead of having it hidden from you inside of a hairball. This should be in every high school. The biggest thing you learn though is that you can't get away from this PC BS fast enough. System administration? Please put it on my phone bill. -JCJ

To: Byron Xiao who wrote (19959)	9/20/1999 4:57:00 AM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 64865

I read an article in the L.A. Times this week about a little company that is porting popular Windows games over to Intel Linux. With more and more computer time being spent on the web, it won't take a lot of software porting to Linux to make it, practically speaking, every bit as useful to the home user as Windows, not to mention cheaper and more reliable. But even that is a short-term situation IMHO. I think the SunRay as telephone/appliance will, in three or four years, make the transition from McNealy/Ellison dream-slogan to everyday fact of life. A focussing personal experience: I just dumped my piece-of-crap ISDN line that I've had for four years and got DSL. And the low-performance DSL at that, 384k in both directions...I could double or triple that for a few more bucks a month. However, competition to provide DSL over existing copper is going to drive the price into the ground in the next 18 months. The RBOCS have hugely underestimated consumer demand; they're putting switches and racks in trailers 'cause they have nowhere else to go. Customers are furious because they have to wait months for a guy to come in and take 15 minutes to install a passive splitter and a DSL modem. DSL absolutely will go through the roof, and cable maybe likewise. So then what's going to happen? IMHO, RBOC's and other DSL ISP's, at each others' throats for customers, will give you a SunRay gratis or nearly so, like they used to give you a phone gratis, for signing up with their service. There's your $400 PC: it turns into a $0 SunRay, including browser, office suites, bill-paying, games, ad infinitum, each of which will cost a little extra per month of course. Why should they give you a PC only to pay a cast of thousands to take your calls about blue screens and illegal operations and device drivers when they can give you a TUBE, a KEYBOARD, and BANDWIDTH...period...with much lower support costs per node and equal functionality? Security? They'll give you a little pamphlet explaining why your data is more secure at their place than at your place, and they'll be telling the truth (plus if you're really anal, they'll sell you a USB Zip drive). And guess what company is selling the great big high-margin boxes and storage systems on the other end of all these free devices? Well, maybe several, but SUNW is a major one, and Bill G. isn't one. I'm here to tell you: once you see real bandwidth to the home, folks, the future snaps into very sharp focus. This is the real answer to your question twister. To me it spells top- and bottom-line growth well in excess of current estimates for SUNW, because current estimates are extrapolations of the status quo, and I think we're looking at breakout. The story for the enterprise will be similar. PC's and Win32 will never die. They will, however, fade away. It won't be without obstacles, but it will happen. Buy and hold SUNW. Regards, --QwikSand