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

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (16317)	5/12/1999 9:38:00 AM
From: Jon Tara	Respond to of 64865

On components: "You have not presented any evidence that the components in a PC are equal to or better than those in a Sun workstation," For the most part, they are the SAME components. Yes, it matters who you buy the PC from. 99.9% of the "generic" brand PCs, and an apalling percentage of "name brand" PCs have cheesy power supplies, and non-ball-bearing fans. (Guaranteed to fail within 2 years. Failed fans are probably the #1 or #2 reason for PC failure, with power supplies the other one.) PC boards, connectors, and mechanical components will also vary in quality, depending on the manufacturer. You get what you pay for. All of the other components are equivalent. Chips is chips. And, any more, hard drives are hard drives - failure rates have plunged to near-nothing, even for the cheap IDE drives used in most (but not all) PCs. I've operated in both worlds for years. I agree with the previous poster that the factor that gives the nod to the PC is wide availability of software with deep functionality and relative ease of use. (Bug-free? No.) For typical office tasks, there just are not great tools available for Unix, or if there are, they cost an arm and a leg. (There's still that gouge gap.) So, despite the problems, and despite having a Unix box at home, my primarly computer (the one I'm typing on) runs Windows NT. And I suspect that will always be the case. My real-time quote software (nor my daily stock quote software) isn't available on Unix, Netscape is U G L Y, etc. etc. I love Unix. I love all the really high-quality freeware for programming and system-y stuff and serving web pages, etc. (But almost nothing for typical office tasks.) I wouldn't set up a web server on NT. I think Sun has a great future, and own the stock. But for my personal desktop, it's NT.

To: Charles Tutt who wrote (16317)	5/12/1999 10:58:00 AM
From: Stormweaver	Respond to of 64865

>> You have not presented any evidence that the components in a >> PC are equal to or better than those in a Sun workstation, and >> you have not addressed design issues (such as memory bandwidth) >> or software reliability that are important in a >> workstation context. There is no evidence to refute PC components are any less reliable that proprietary iron components. For a desktop environment the PC has sufficient bus capability and RAS would be equal or higher. My 486-66 PC (cheapy clone) is still running after 8 years without $1 spent on any form of replacement parts other than adding a second 400MB hard drive; runs Linux rather well. >> PC's in offices for the most part replaced typewriters and >> early word processors which were also cost effective and >> allowed people to be productive; your assertion is empty >> vis-a-vis Unix workstations. That was 12 years ago Charles. PC desktop's are more cost effective since productivity is higher (better applications) and their initial price and maintainance costs are less than a Sun iron workstation. Almost all desktop software comes out on win98/NT primarily since that is what 80% of desktop computers are running.