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

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (9242)	4/21/1998 9:43:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Michael, RE: applications, applications, applications: How many of these "hundreds of thousands" of applications that supposedly run on Windows are enterprise applications? Solaris, to date has 13,000 applications running, and they're all for business, engineering, & science (major multi-user efforts). The point is, comparing the "hundreds of thousands" of apps on Windows, most of which are personal productivity apps, with Unix apps is not an appropriate comparison, when trying to assess the usefulness of an O/S.

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (9242)	4/21/1998 10:46:00 PM
From: paul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

"Otherwise, Windows it is. Quick poll here? How many posters are accessing this forum with a Windows-based browser? How many of you think you could fire up a UNIX box to do the same? " huh....i access the web with Netscape on a Sun Workstation at work. I have a home computer running Winblows 95 which is rarely used since it doesnt have internet access - a $3,000 paper weight. I get 90% of the work i need done on the browser - why should i care if i run Netscape on Windows orSolaris On the other hand my Solaris workstation is always up and productive immediately since it stays on all the time - i walk in, check my mail and get on the net immediately. I do not recall when was the last time i had to reboot it. Alternatively My pc will often freeze and need to be rebooted due to all the conflicts in the software - I get several error messages during the boot process of several minutes which have stayed the same for the 3 years ive owned it and i have no idea what they mean. While Microsoft promises that Winblowz 98 will have major improvements i guess like faster reboot times i think i'll pass on the opportunity. So why do you think Micosoft is so interested in investing millions to develop a free browser and put Netscape out of business - dont you think they understand that the browser and Java obsolete their bloated desktop centric OS?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (9242)	4/22/1998 7:38:00 AM
From: batskinner	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Otherwise, Windows it is. Quick poll here? How many posters are accessing this forum with a Windows-based browser? How many of you think you could fire up a UNIX box to do the same? I've been using Sun boxes with Netscape (and many moons ago Mosaic) for years. What's so difficult about loading a browser onto a Unix box and "firing it up"? In fact, I like the fact that I can cleanly and easily remove applications from Unix (e.g. when upgrading Netscape) without leaving a trail of garbage strewn throughout the system as happens with Windows. I find it simply incredible that an OS as touted as Windows still doesn't have features as basic as sym-links. And "shortcuts" are not the same thing. On another note, I find it amazing how casually MSFT supporters brush aside this latest Win98 demo snafu. The point has been made that the only reason a bigger deal has not been made of this is that people are used to having Windows crash. And don't feed me this "it was a pre-release version" stuff. Anyone who has ever demo'd anything knows that you try your hardest to make good and sure that the system (whatever "system" you happen to be demo'ing) will do what you want. I love B. Gates response to this where he says something like we all depend on technology but sometimes it doesn't work as we would like. That's fine for you Bill, but I'd actually prefer that the banks, mortgage companies, brokers, hospitals, airlines, etc. that I use have a system that actually does work reliably. I guess I'm just picky and have unreasonable expectations though.

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (9242)	4/22/1998 10:46:00 AM
From: Judd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

>>How many of you think you could fire up a UNIX box to do the same? My Linux box is fired up and running fine. I would use my Sun workstation at home more if it wasn't so old and slow. I am teaching a friend a little about Unix/Linux and he was asking me questions about crashing and how often, like it is supposed to happen or something. I told him almost never and I think that was hard for him to believe, because he is used to winblows. I was also showing him that if you did crash X-windows, or apps that the kernel will still be running fine. There is no confusion as to what is the OS, the GUI and the application in Unix like there is in Winblows. I've seen video cards/drivers crash the OS many times in windows. Now MS is trying to say that it doesn't know the difference between a browser and the OS. I just have to say I don't know what they are smokin', but I'm not that stupid.