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

To: Jon Tara who wrote (10570)	7/21/1998 1:52:00 AM
From: Mark Gilbert	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

"Sorry, the NC lost. It's a dead issue" Jon, I am not an NC fanatic or fan...however, you are ignoring the basic argument for NC's. It has nothing to do with costs out of the box. We all agree that pc's are as cheap, if not cheaper, than NC's. Where NC's shine is enterprise management. NC's are WAY cheaper to maintain. Say you are Joe IT guy. If you have 500 windows users on your LAN, your life is spent trouble shooting 500 windows machines (and most of us here know how difficult supporting one machine is). Not to mention the big bucks Microsoft wants in licensing for each and every machine you own (along with a fee for every microsoft app. you run on every machine you own). Most NC's are extremely easy to maintain, and the software licensing costs are no where near as expensive as PC's are. The basic argument for NC's is not internet downloads, low cost of hardware, or cheap storage. The compelling argument is total cost of ownership. This counts software costs, maintenance costs, and licensing costs. NC's are not the "holy grail" for the pc user at home. They are, however, a means to keep LAN administrative costs from going through the roof. That being said, I do agree that Sun's future is in the server. NC's seem to be a distraction to Sun. Aloha, Mark

To: Jon Tara who wrote (10570)	7/21/1998 3:49:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Jon, The dumb terminal market is estimated to be about 30 million units in size. Not a bad niche for the JavaStation & IBM's Network Station. Did you know that quite a few of the jobs that could use an NC are now using PC's? Everything from libraries to customer service bureaus can make use of it successfully at a great cost savings. NC's are going to usher in the era of inexpensive computing appliances & get people used to the idea of using the network for more than just browsing, especially the 60+ million homes in the USA who still don't own PC's. Another residual benefit of the NC to SUNW is that it has helped to usher in the sub $1000 PC, thus slashing the gross margins of INTC and sending it closer to the SUNW camp & further from MSFT. BTW, it used to be that you couldn't get electricity into your house unless you kept & maintained your own power generator. Gradually, people got used to getting their electricity from a electric utility co. It's still not a bad idea to have a small generator around in case of power failures, but most people use them as a backup unit only. Your "thin client" lightswitch is reliable enough that you probably prefer it to maintaining your own generator. The main concern you seem to have has to do with security & speed: valid concerns, to be sure. Eventually, those issues will be resolved and that it will be cheap and convenient to trust ISP's with your data.

To: Jon Tara who wrote (10570)	7/21/1998 4:17:00 PM
From: Jean M. Gauthier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

EXACTLY !!! I am so tired of the 2 types of predominant posts on this board... 1- Java/NC TRUE Believers, Unix guys who think people will want NC's and UNIX AT HOME [for god's sake] instead of win95/win98 Yeah right. They think everyone is unix loving, VI loving techie ridiculous 2- Holy WAR against MicroSoft. Give ME a BREAK ! Who cares if Microsoft goes to court for something. The 65 Million PC clients are actual clients of SUN Servers ans equipment !! We make money with INTEL and SUNW We make Money with MICROSOFT and SUNW Leave the non-objective, subjective anti-microsft rants out of it and focus on a wonderful company like SUn MicroSystems. Actually, even Red Herring Magazine [the magazine high-tech BIBLE of the industry] agreed with me, that McNeely is HURTING SUNW with his ridiculous rant and raves against MicroSOFT. Thank God the President of SUNW, not his subjective moron CEO, McNeely End of Rant Let the games begin !!! Jean i.e a SUNW, INTEL shareholder. NO MSFT yet.