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

To: E_K_S who wrote (11202)	10/1/1998 7:56:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Eric, Pretty good idea you got there. Why not send it in to Ed Z??

To: E_K_S who wrote (11202)	10/2/1998 12:07:00 AM
From: paul	Respond to of 64865

MCI Worldcom and UUnet both have Sun Solaris backbones. Relative to Solaris i dont know any benefits you would get with Linux. I also dont belive that there is any sophisticated clustering management software for linux like their is for Solaris. Solaris is also tightly integrated with Sun hardware to give the type of RAS features required by ISP's - i dont see Linux or any of the commercial software vendors selling linux capable of undertaking these efforts. Linux seems more suited for small shops and hackers/hobbyists and those looking for microsoft alternatives which i fully support!

To: E_K_S who wrote (11202)	10/2/1998 1:23:00 AM
From: JC Jaros	Respond to of 64865

Hi Eric- The phone company will never run on Linux, or any x86 incarnation of Unix. 64 bit RAS Solaris (reigning champion of the Unix Wars) is already there (AT). Unlike Microsoft though and "Windows everywhere", there isn't a competing "Unix everywhere" mindset outside of the server or serious workstation. It's just not practical (kinda like modern Windows PCs altogether, only admittedly so). While Linux and Solaris x86 are both great ways to occupy your time on a Pentium computer, the phone company isn't interested much in consumer devices that cost $1,000+ and an investment of time for the end user to administer. That's where the (Sun) thin client model comes into some focus. It's tough to draw that line right now, because there isn't a thin client product or OS ready for prime time, while at the same time there's such a backlash against the absurdity of the complex 'hairball' (Wintel) desktop, and a desire on the part of so many PC users to have a richer experience (*nix), closer to the machine. I would think though that a 'Solaris Lite' version (one minus JVM) would be completely contrary to Sun's vision. In fact, I would think the Sun product that MCI is looking for is more akin to the JVM minus the rest of it. JCJ

To: E_K_S who wrote (11202)	10/2/1998 8:01:00 AM
From: Dermot Burke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

eric, sidgmore is a very old friend of bill. msft was an early financial backer of uunet. i'll bet the internal debate is a heated one. things sure are getting fun thanks to linux.

To: E_K_S who wrote (11202)	10/2/1998 6:15:00 PM
From: Chung Yang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

I am not sure how ISP pledging support to Linux could mean anything. It probably only establishs Red Hat has the defacto standard for commercial linux distribution over other Linux vendors. My interpretation of Mr. Sidgmore's comment is that he doesn't have any idea about Linux. And their marketing/public relations dept hasn't done ample research to tell him what to say ... so in effect he is just staying, "I don't know." If I had to guess, I think comments toward Solaris will be different because chances are MCI Worldcom is running on some mixed environment which includes UltraSparc Boxes and Solaris OS. I am not even sure if they have any Intel boxes that they use as servers. Uunet is pretty old, chances are they run on old IBM mainframes. The brand Solaris is pretty well established, although it says nothing about the quality of Solaris-X86 OS. The key point here is neither Linux nor Solaris are ready to be end-user operating systems. If anything they will be focusing on enterprise applications. Just because Intel and Netscape pleadges support it doesn't mean that they are committing to Linux being the defacto UNIX standard. They did so more to cheese off Microsoft. If anything it helps the unix market. But I believe that Sun has to do much more to establish Solaris as a serious player for the X86 archictecture. On the other hand, I don't expect Intel and Netscape to give such show of solidarity towards Sun. That would really alienate Microsoft as well as a host of other X86 UNIX providers. But if there is one comment I have to make about SUN is that they have not done enough to garner grass root support for Solaris. They should do more. - Chung >>> Hi Chung - Do you think MCI WorldCom would make a similar comment about Sun Solaris? (http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980930S0003) From the article: "...Netscape and Intel may be cranking up support of Linux with their investment in Red Hat Software Tuesday, but not all ISPs, particularly the largest one, plan to quickly embrace this suddenly popular version of Unix. John Sidgmore, vice chairman of MCI WorldCom, said his own company, which owns Uunet Technologies, has had a lot of internal debate about Linux, but hasn't made a decision about whether it's something the carrier wants to support. "I really don't know -- there's been no testing [of Linux]," said Sidgmore, prior to his keynote presentation at ISPCon here in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday. "[Linux] seems to come out of nowhere, and those things always scare me." ..." <<<

To: E_K_S who wrote (11202)	10/2/1998 9:52:00 PM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Sun Microsyst (SUNW)(Reuters 11:46 AM ET 10/02/98) (http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2556391706-d46) Scott McNealy, chairman and chief executive of network computing products company SUN MICROSYSTEMS INC, got $1.7 mln in salary and bonus this fiscal year, down from $2.6 mln in 1997, Sun said. He also received options to buy 400,000 Sun shares at $43.63 per share, expiring June 17, 2008, according to Sun's proxy filed with the SEC for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1988. Those options were higher than what any other Sun executive named in the proxy received for 1998. ===================================================================== I would say that the downside support for SUNW would be $43.63 as this is the price of the options for our CEO. EKS P.S. I got Solaris X86 up and running while my NT system just crashed again. It will be interesting to find out which system is more stable. However, there are many more devise drivers for NT thus making it more functional as a small business machine. I will soon have a better idea once I get both systems configured with the same devices and applications (when available...).