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Sun To Sell Linux PCs
Rubbersoul writes "Reuters.com is reporting that in "a bid to undermine arch-rival Microsoft Corp" Sun is going to jump into selling low cost Linux PCs. The article is a bit low on technical details, but is interesting none the less. Also if you take this new news with a story from yesterday about Sun pushing StarOffice for schools around the world, you really start to get an idea that sun wants to beat MS like a red headed step child ..." An editorial in the WorldTechTribute argues that Sun's education-market giveaway is exactly the sort of behavior that Microsoft has been attacked for in the past.
Why should I wait for Sun when I can buy from Pogo Linux today? Seriously. I will be buying new system in the next few weeks, so I've been looking around. Any reason why I might wait for Sun's offering?
I do not have a signature
It's difficult not to say, good for them.
-- Scientist: You aren't going to leave me here, are you? Boagh! Thump...
Low cost hardware doesn't sound like Sun's schtick, now does it?
Sun selling >low cost things???, uhm, oh yeah. :)
Looking at their prices on their web site I cannot imagine what low cost means to them
------- The last Sig. got fired.
What compelling reason is there to buy a Sun box over a the umpteen beige box vendors, IBM, Compaq, Dell, etc? Linux is only part of a low-priced solution. Does Sun think they can make a box cheaper than Dell?
"argues that Sun's education-market giveaway is exactly the sort of behavior that Microsoft has been attacked for in the past.:
A few differences:- Sun has not been ruled a monopoly
- Sun is not trying to give away free things to schools as a sanction to being ruled a monopoly
They're losing ground in the server market, have priced themselves out of all competition, and now they're going for the education market?
Hmmm, I think it's a hopeless cause for them.
Getting into the education market is putting them between two highly competitive companies: Apple and Microsoft. Additionally, they're trying to get into the cheap pc market and compete against eMachines, Dell, Gateway, etc.?
Sounds to me like they feel left out and are trying desparately to get their stock price out of the gutter without any original ideas.
If Sun put a mainstream distro, (preferably Redhat), on the machines it'll be successful.
If Sun put CowBoyNeal's version of Wine, running on Foobar Linux, under the Bochs emulator, which is actually running on Plan-9, installed on an ESDI hard disk, with no PCI bus, but EISA instead, and 30-pin SIMMs, and everything installed via a PERTEC interface tape drive, then it won't be very successful.
I just wonder which option they will go for. Unfortunely, the second option seems to be the preferable choice for a lot of system builders who ship Linux!
Sun's giveaway of Star Office is not the same as Microsoft's giveaway of IE. With the case of IE, Microsoft bundled its browser free with Windows in a manner known as comingling (sp?), gave it a prominent placement on the desktop, and tried to prevent Netscape from being preinstalled.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Moreover, what is Sun talking about giving away here? Linux machines? Java tools? StarOffice? Sun isn't exactly the only provider of such technology, so even if the giveaways propel adoption of these technologies, their open nature means that this won't necessarily translate back to their bottom line. On the other hand, for every PC Microsoft gives away it'll be running Windows [money back to themselves], it'll probably be running Office [money back to themselves], and maybe it'll have Visual Studio [money back to themselves]. None of these are open, none of these have significant competition. If they get people using such technology, there's only one vendor supplying it.
Please compare Apples to Apples or, in this case, Suns to Suns.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
for contracts where they supply a server and then N cheap boxes, i.e. glorified terminals, running something or other.
Basically it's the Sun Network Computer except now it runs linux and it has email and word processor, and so the people with them don't feel like they were given the gimpiest computers.
Will they follow the Cobalt Cube approach since they already have it or will they go another route?
_ _
The Cobalt Cube looked very cool in their little blue cases. I did not see in the article if they were going to be intel or sparc based.
I am not going into the basic Wintel bashing stuff but I hope it does well simply because it gives consumers more choices even if those products are focused primarily at educational and corporate users.
_______________________________________________
ACK
Sun's obsession with Microsoft doesn't hurt Microsoft, but it is going to kill Sun. While they are busy wasting all their resources "fighting" Microsoft (a company not even in the same market as they are for the most part), IBM is going to squash them on the high end, while Intel finishes taking the low and medium end hardware from them.
There's no hypocrisy here. They're not trying to create an illegal monopoly, they're trying to find ways to compete with an illegal monopoly that hasn't been punished. If circumstances were different, and there was already intense competition in the market, I'd be extraordinarily suspicious of this tactic. As it is, I think this is legitimate.
How low is low? Will these cost $500 or $100?
I can see myself buying one maybe as a secondary PC, or perhaps a Christmas gift to my parents, if the price is right.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
Quote from article:
"The primary motivator for enterprise customers (to buy Sun Linux desktops) will be reduction in costs and freedom from Microsoft," Sun said in a statement on the user conference.
The way this is worded just has an elitest anti-MS sentiment about it. "Freedom from Microsoft". Why should the primary motivator be to give users freedom from MS? One thing that has always bothered me about SUN is that they just can't get away from slamming MS all the time. Sure, it might be appealing to a lot of anti-MS people, but most Joe Blow consumers aren't going to buy a PC just because they want to be "free from Microsoft".
If they would have approached this new product with something like "offering consumers more choices and better prices" I would be much more excited about it. At first I thought that is honestly what they were trying to do, but then I read the statement mentioned above. Now I read it as "we don't care about the consumer, we just want to take marketshare away from MS's customers". Just a perception thing, but I think it has merit. I'm sure I won't be the only one to pick up on this.
And when Sun has their Office Suite monopoly, they'll use their propriety (fully documented) xml file format to force people to use either Windows, Linux, or Solaris forever. HAHAHAHAHA!!!! It's just too dastardly!
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
Market behavior with is legal and ethical by a company in a competitive market is neither legal nor ethical for a monopolist.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
New Linux virus creates peer-to-peer terror network
HP finally fires their anti-business business strategist for Linux
Disbanding the RIAA will turn the music scene into 17th Century Europe
The GPL, open source freedoms and the Cold War
This last article has this classic quote:
The small minority of geeks who adhere to the cultish mindset of the GPL and Linux will definitely take offense to this, but there is no reasoning with someone who blindly follows the precepts of open source and the GPL ...those people will never understand why the NSA would reject the GPL. For rational people, I can sum up exactly why the GPL is not and in its current form will never be useful for the NSA or any similar enterprise: "Open" is the exact opposite of "secure."
While I wish SUN all the best luck in selling these low-cost Linux PCs, I don't have great faith in their ability to succeed in this low-margin market. These companies don't have a true understanding for how little money is involved with selling PC hardware.
I worked for SGI a few years ago (as an intern), just as they were introducing their PC strategy. They were coming out with (relatively) low-cost NT workstations with a proprietary graphics system (kicked ass at the time..), but were immediately stuck in a catch-22. They had high prices because they couldn't sell enough, and couldn't sell enough because of their high prices. SGI also tried selling server-ish PC boxes (with redundant power supplies, and multiple processors and stuff), but that lasted about a year as well, before it went away (at least I can't find it on their web page anymore)
When people buy PC hardware, they expect to pay PC hardware prices. And they want support. And warranties.. There's just no money there...especially not the kind of money these companies are used to seeing.
If they're getting in to this to make money, then they're in trouble. If SUN is getting in to this to fight against MS, then great, but I don't think SUN has enough money to fight MS.
Sure about that?.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
This move may or may not do anything for Sun's fortunes, but it's sure to keep IBM/Redhat awake at nights.This is a race to see which company is the "offical" supplier of linux desktop/workstation pc's, and that means more choice for you, and more opportunities for Linux growth.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
of course selling penguins to Antartica is lost cause and even Sun wouldn't try that ....
However much I love seeing competition for Microsoft and however much I respect Sun for their server-side products, I have to say: Sun is absolutely clueless when it comes to desktop software and useability. Let's hope they're still able to learn...
"We won't use guns, we won't use bombs, we'll use the one thing we've got more of and that's our minds" - Pulp
The comparison between what Sun is doing and the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft is unfair.
Microsoft using its desktop dominance to put IE in front of users before they have a chance to get Netscape is using dominance in one market to gain dominance in another. That's when a company uses a monopoly in a criminal manner.
Sun, on the other hand, is trying to gain share in a market where they have no leverage other than their product and the price they're willing to sell it at. They aren't leveraging their hardware products (AFAICT) to get people to use Star Office. They aren't using Solaris to push Star Office onto these companies. They are doing what any non-monopoly company would do when entering a new market: offering their products at a very low price (here, free) to encourage users to switch. The pay-off comes far, far down the line when Star Office (potentially) becomes a real player in the field of office software.
In short: Microsoft leverages OS dominance to gain browser dominance. Sun uses low price to gain a foothold in office productivity market. Not the same thing.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The New York Times article,
The New Sun Ready to Push Linux as Alternative to Microsoft, emphasizes the push for Linux and StarOffice, without any mention of hardware. All of these articles are guessing what Sun is going to say tomorrow, when the offical announcement is to be made.
Sun has a history of pulling stunts like this against Microsoft. Their reasoning is that every dollar that doesn't end up in Microsoft's pocket, is a dollar they can't spend in developing software competing with Sun's own. It's as simple as that.
Star Office was an attempt to undermine the very profitable Office suite. By pushing Linux machines, they do the same thing with the OS. They don't gain anything on this themselves - it's not their technology, it's just that they want to take away free money from MS.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Obviously Scott hasn't paid much attention to the FACT (as estabished in court and held up on appeal) that Microsoft has monopoly, but Sun does not.
Sun's bundling their entry to the productivity software market with low-end PCs would be illegal, and hypocracy, if Sun has a monopoly in low-end PC hardware.
Last time I checked, Sun did not have a monopoly in low-end PC hardware. In fact, nobody has any market share in PC hardware that even remotely resembles a monopoly.
Scott ovbious likes Microsoft a lot (or rehashed some press material to meet a deadline...) For example:
The article goes on trashing Sun... they're losing money, they might not be serious out the productivity software because they sell hardware (yes, fear, uncertainty and doubt... pure speculation), Sun's throwing away 5.7 billion by giving it away for free.... how many people outside software, music labels and movie studios really believe that all those people who accepted it for free would have paid full retail ??
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Sure the hardware would be the same as what you can get from Dell, Gateway, etc.
But if they have a really cool case design (like Apple) with the Sun logo on front I think it would have a chance to sell to status-minded geeks at a premium.
Some of you are probably laughing at this but there is no doubt that image sells.
From where I'm sitting, Sun can't be about to push a load of cheap linux boxes out for the average user. That would be commercial suicide - the PC market is already too cut-throat for there to be any margins to work with.
Sun probably isn't that worried about getting a vast income from pushing StarOffice for schools either - the benefit to Sun from this initiative is that students will be familiar with StarOffice rather than MS Office.
Sun's likely push here is to move in and replace all those Windows boxes in places like call centres, POS terminals and sales rooms where a centralized server provides much of the grunt and the terminals actually don't do much. Being able to replace existing Windows installs with PC + Linux makes a lot of cost sense - network installs, locked down to prevent fiddling, with the needed apps either on the Linux machines or on a central (Solaris?) server is likely to be a winner on TCO.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Yeah, except for the two facts you ignored in the post (all of it!) to which you were ostensibly responding.
Troll.
Let's all move Scott McCollum into our collective killfiles and move on, shall we? Furthermore, the key difference between Sun's donation and Microsoft's, besides the fact that Sun is not a monopoly, is that Sun has open sourced Star Office. To gloss over this little fact is typical for a professional troll like McCollum. While Star Office itself is not open, it's an open platform, and the differences between SO and OO are minor. So even if SO/OO were to become the standard, it would always be easy to move somewhere else if necessary (and you can bet someone will fork OO if Sun does something fishy).
Scott had the opportunity to make nice a few years back like Steve Jobs, and just accept the inevitable - Bill controls a huge swath of the computing market. Admitting such helped keep Apple in the game, and it got some good MS software on OSX quickly.
I'm not saying that MS and Sun would exactly be in bed today had Scott made nice, but certainly a less adversarial approach could have kept Sun out of the crosshairs.
you really start to get an idea that sun wants to beat MS like a red headed step child ..."
Who exactally is the redheaded step child here? I just have this image of Sun as the little step brother madder than hell swinging at Microsoft that is holding the kid at arms length by the top of the head.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
I wish some people (like Scott McCollum of WorldTechTribune) would give themselves a basic understanding of monopoly law.
Microsoft is a monopoly. That's very easily been proven. They have 90% share of the operating system market. In fact, they're a BIG monopoly. Many monopolies don't even have that large of a share.
When you're a monopoly, there are things that LEGALLY you aren't allowed to do. And it pretty much comes down to using your power as a monopoly to make yourself an even bigger monopoly.
MS can't (legally) tell Compaq/HP/Dell/Gateway that they must buy a copy of MS Word for every copy of MS Windows they purchase. That's bundling and it's illegal *if you're a monopoly*. If you're not a monopoly, isn't not illegal.
There's more restrictions on companies that are monopolies. If you don't like it, too bad. That's the law.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
To buy some Microsoft stock
... WTF?
Really, Every time Sun gets some idea about how to dethrone Microsoft, and crown themselves, they perpetually f*ck it up.
Java: Good Try, but the constant fighting blew it.
StarOffice: Uh, It's GPL, er No!
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Oh, nevermind. :P
.
I _am_ a red-headed stepchild. Insensitive clods.
Look at what has happened to SGI since it began selling machines branded with Linux. Can you say "I want my stock to be worth $1?" SGI's current stock price
I hope Sun doesn't treat Linux as a buzzword; if they do they very well may end up like SGI.
Per a Sun rep' Sun's Linux is only for Sun hardware, it won't be made available to the public. Worse yet they are stripping Linux down instead of fixing bugs it finds. That way it limits the amount of code it has to return to the community. Bottom line Sun Linux is a joke, its nothing but a Marketing ploy in McNealy's wallet envy of Bill Gates.
I remember an interview with McNealy right after the anti-trust trial started. He said being a CEO you have to do whatever you can to build the business for you investors. That if he ran Microsoft he wouldn't do things any different than Gates, its just business. IMO McNealy just uses the Linux community as pawns in his battle with MS.
An editorial in the WorldTechTribute argues that Sun's education-market giveaway is exactly the sort of behavior that Microsoft has been attacked for in the past.
It may be a little immoral, but there is no argument here. If I were Ford or GMC I could give away any number of cars I want, and they do constantly and they can do it for whatever reason they want.
Microsoft is a monopoly. Under monopoly rules any action taken to strengthen that monopoly is ILLEGAL. Giving away PCs for someone with low market share is legal if they can make money at it. Microsoft giving away PCs that increase their market penetration further and take away from low share competitors and possibly lock those schools into Microsoft products is not legal when you already have 95% of the market.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It seems to me that Sun could move ahead by focusing on hardware and integration. Solaris has some advantages over Linux but Linux has been gaining ground. The future of Sun is not in a closed Solaris. It seems that Sun has the resources to deliver real solutions for large customers - large servers, Linux desktops, diskless Linux terminals, etc. If they focus on making great hardware and making everything play really well together then they stand a better chance of making this work. Frankly the beige box war is over. I hope they see that the next phase is about integration and interoperability. Deliver more function, more security, less headaches, more integration for fewer dollars and you survive the next round. Dell could be a victim of their own success if they don't get this.
And what does Windows XP have to do with it? I'm talking about the cost for Dell or Sun to produce a linux box, in which case neither pays for XP.
I guess I don't get it. How is Linux going to make the PC cheaper? Or are you just talking about the cost of purchase, not the TCO? In the enterprise, Linux is more expensive to run on the desktop than Windows is, because the most basic tools for Windows (Outlook, for one) don't exist in a usable form on Linux.
I don't think Sun is trying to sell computers to home users, here. I think we need to be thinking about how Linux fits into their enterprise computing strategy.
An editorial in the WorldTechTribute argues that Sun's education-market giveaway is exactly the sort of behavior that Microsoft has been attacked for in the past.
Yes, because THEY ARE A MONOPOLY.
If Microsoft wasn't a monopoly, the scrutiny placed upon their moves would be far less significant. If any move they make may be extending their monopoly or leveraging it, then they are game for criticism. If Sun wants to give StarOffice away, fine, they aren't a monopoly.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"Selling out" to Microsoft hasn't exactly hurt Dell, whose market cap is nearly seven times that of Sun's.
In the news today, the US declared war on... Hold on, we have some BREAKING NEWS. I'm being told that Sun will soon be showing plans for a low-cost Linux-based PC!!!
The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
Linux on an ultra sparc chip may be a real alternative for those who like to vote against DRM with their wallets.
What, you actually *liked* that Sam kid on Different Strokes?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
giant corporation known as WALMART! Poor Sun, perhaps they will bloody that beast. :).
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
From the Reuters article:
...sparking strong debate over which market [servers or desktops] Linux will hurt most.
Ouch... I don't think Linux will or has hurt either market. In fact, I think Linux has been good for the server market definately, and probably for the desktop market.
Someone should tell Reuters to watch their language, news services aren't supposed to be so biased.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
You may not be aware that Sun has donated 200 developers to the Gnome project (i.e. they are Sun employees who work exclusively on Gnome) and that Sun is standardising Gnome as the desktop of choice on Solaris.
I'm running Gnome 2.0b2 on Solaris 9 here at home and have to say that I am extremely happy with it.
This doesn't make sense. One could illegally <do anything> and so by extension could illegally create a monopoly or perhaps the author meant that Sun appears to be hoping to create a monopoly which they then might then intend to illegally maintain, but I don't understand the concept of "...create an illegal monopoly...". Are there jurisdictions where simply creating or having a monopoly is considered to be illegal?
That has the makings for a great Month Python skit: a failing company in a desperate act to save itself, goes out-of-business, leaving it's successful competitor owning a monopoly on the market, requiring that they be declared illegal and shutdown, at which point the failing business returns as the new market leader. (only to discover that they now own a monopoly on the market and are henceforth declared illegal, shutdown, etc. Thereafter, any business which tries to cash in on that market becomes the monopoly provider and is immediately shutdown....
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Firstly I think you are underestimating how many people roll their own support. I mean, when is the last time in an office of any kind that someone phoned the manufacturer when a desktop box had a problem? Most people just try to hash it out themselves, which they have been doing with PCs for years.
Isn't this what the sun Blade line was supposed to be, albeit with Solaris?
Considering that Sun won't be able to make a profit at below, say, $600 (sans display), I'm not sure how may people would see the benefit of saving a little money over a better design. While I am a great Linux fan, I still think that commercial unixes off benefits that Linux and other Free OSes don't have -- not the least of which is a large corporate support base.
Of course, I am talking from a Unix developers point of view, and it's very possible that Sun wants to position these new ones toward secretaries and the like. However, as a developer I'd rather bay a little extra money and get an authentic Unix machine if I had the chance.
Of course, even a fake unix machine in out of my financial grasp right now *sheepish grin*
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
If it's like OpenOffice, it'll never fly in the US. I was going to use OO in the office, but there's no way to set it up for U.S inches. The "US letter" thing works, and the page rulers will change to inches, but all the margin settings are in millimeters. And there's no way to change the default print command to anything other than "lpr" and make it permanent. (If there is a way to do these things, I couldn't find it from a menu.)
FWIW, I tried OO after I gave up on KOffice. KDE in general doesn't care how many times you tell it to print US Letter-size, it insists on printing A4-size pages. (The KDE mailing lists are *not* the place to point out things that are broken - replies range from "you got the source, fix it yourself" to "go back to Windoze." There doesn't seem to be much interest in userland usability reports.)
So I tried AbiWord, it did US inches, great! But it has the same problem OO has, default printer is "lpr" and there's no way to change it to "lpr -P whateverdriver" and make it permanent. Which works OK for a semi-geek-literate like me, but requiring an average button-pusher to remember to add the -P stuff just doesn't cut it. It's amazing how many pages of garbage get printed if you forget it, too. Maybe some day Linux will be ready for prime-time in the US, but not today. Damn.
Well, maybe not quite that bad, but close. Here are some samples from their articles:
"What makes open source the secure, stable and elegant software panacea open source cultists claim it is? ... say you are the IT director at a bank and you buy into the Linux is stable, secure and bulletproof hype. ... Welcome to the lazy, cut-and-paste world of open source 'innovation' where people who should be smart enough to know better still think you can get something for nothing. It would be humorous if it wasn't so pathetic..." ("Thanks to open source methods, only 2 out of 500 job-hunting programmers pass skills test")
"The outcry against Palladium doesn't really stem from a concern about your privacy, but more from a vocal minority who wish to impose their anarchistic schemes onto us under the guise of 'freedom' and 'liberty.'" ("Microsoft's Palladium transforms Internet from Wild West to suburban neighborhood")
"many customers who purchased those inherently more stable, secure and virus-proof Linux servers are probably wishing there was a multi-million dollar virus protection industry to help them out." ("New Linux virus creates peer-to-peer terror network")
"The SE Linux project was developed during the Clinton administration ... NSA officials say their cyber security enhancements made for SE Linux have not only benefited the NSA, but because of the terms of the GPL have also strengthened the security architecture of computers used by malicious cyber terrorists around the world."
("NSA deputy director says 'never again' to Open Source")
That last article is just hysterical. The NSA administrators, under pressure from Microsoft, stopped development on SELinux -- because Microsoft didn't like the fact that government-developed code was released freely under the GPL. Microsoft objected to the competition. WorldTechTribune is using all its quotes out of context, and pretending that the objection was concerning national security and terrorism. Amazing.
Sun are pitching it at people who own call centers and Uni's
The box's that Sun will sell have Smart Card readers in
this means that JavaCard
basically easy to setup and sign on with BIG SUN server's doing the web portal and sign on crypto
I would put a bet on it containing www so everyone is happy includeing Visa who will send you more junk mail telling you are approved
regards
John Jones
Dell can't make a box without Windows XP. They tried. Have you been reading Slashdot lately?
-=Lothsahn=-
Who gave the parent post "insightful"?? What an ass clown....waaaa waaaa...it disturbs me...waaa waaa child abuse....
Sun appears to be going down the same path. I think it is only a matter of time before Sun becomes a shell of its former self, consigned to a slow death by their overpriced hardware.
Think of it like the last stages of a star. Sun's now in the red-giant stage. I hope the irony of the company's name in this analogy is not lost.
Sun should sell StarOffice for MacOS X if they are really interested in selling it for education otherwise why bother.
FYI, lots of schools use Macs.
If they were going after Dell there then I can understand but, you can't beat Dell at the cost game.
I don't see how this is much of a suprise. Sun's got a vested interest in anything Unix or Unix-like. They also have a vested interest in promoting their supplimental products. If they can sell someone a bunch of Linux client systems that work with their server products that customer is going to be likely to pick up their server products as well. Microsoft is less interested in selling you a site license for Windows XP Pro than they are interested in selling you a support contract for XP Server and all associated programs. The same goes for Office, if Microsoft gets Office XP there's a good chance BackOffice will end up there as well.
Right now Sun has the 20% software to fill 80% of people's needs. When users don't have to administer it themselves, just run it, Linux is not a bad system at all to deal with. GNOME is a very good desktop environment and there are plenty of apps to substitute the collection you're going to find on the typical computer lab PC. StarOffice is not a competitor to Office XP in many respects but it does serve the needs of most general users. StarOffice in a school would work just fine in most cases.
I'm suprised they didn't try this any earlier really. They've had their Blade systems out for a while now without much fanfare. Ray systems are the same way, they've been available for a while and aside from the initial rumbling when they were introduced nothing particularly impressive has been announced regarding them. Sun has managed in the past to get their foot in the door of many college CS departments because of Java development packages. Maybe now they are trying to get their head in the door by showing off some of their other products.
I think the only way this will really succeed is if the systems are priced very attractively and no one else comes out with a better Linux offering. All Sun needs in this situation to fail miserably is to have IBM or HP spit out some cheapo box with Linux on it. If they're not interested Apple could drop the price of the eMac down to $799 or less. There's a bunch of schools jumping all over eMacs at $1000, lowering the price would only increase the demand. I think Sun's bad timing could make them the losers in the not-Microsoft PC market.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I like the effort, but they could do more. Ok, here's the biggest problem with most software companies. The academic version isn't much cheaper. For example, I can go to the bookstore here at IUPUI and get a copy of MS anything for around $5 per CD. That's $25 for VS.net, $5 for XP Pro, etc. Why of why doesn't RedHat, SUN, and everyone else get in on this. We have whole generations of college students that have no idea how to use anything else but MS products. Why did they buy them? Because it was hundreds cheaper than the "alternative". I'm guilty of buying a few MS CDs just so I could have a copy if I needed it. Which I did because I have a VB class. Thus I had to get XP and VS6. for a grand total of $5 (downloaded VS6 from IUWARE). If sun would step up and give away CDs like MS does, as well as offer cheap hardware like apple does for us, then maybe just maybe MS's strangle hold on everyone would start to vanish.
Scott McCollum is nothing more than another Un-educated troll. In fact the one technology reporter/editorialist I cant stand on this planet (John C devorak... mr-rant and rave without a clue) has much more credibility than this Scott McCollum fellow. Look at his last 5 rants. They are all childish trolls at best. Full of unfounded opinion and uneducated conclusions. I am all for opinion but only for people that have read, researched and made their decision logically and smartly.. not like this "report what we feed you and be a zelaot about it" crap he writes.
Scott McCollum.... this is another person that really needs to be added to everyones ignore list.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This does not bode well for the future of Solaris on Intel. First, Soalris 9 isn't released for Intel. And now this? Solaris on x86is dead.
This should be a clear signal to corps runnimg Solaris on Intel, tha it is time to start migrating to Linux (machines, sysadmin processes, backups, etc.).
did you get a look at the other headlines?
Smells like a slashdot for pointy-haired "IT" people..
[otis@eddie mail]# telnet www.worldtechtribune.com 80
Trying 216.26.163.62...
Connected to host62.216.26.163.maximumasp.com (216.26.163.62).
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:22:00 GMT
MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
Location: http://216.26.163.62/216.26.163.62
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 155
Content-Type: text/html
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDQQGGQESC=HKCNLLACFKPELMJFLHFNPKDC; path=/
Cache-control: private
ps: what about an nmap result set is "junk characters"
The editorial mentioned at the end of the slashdot article is painfully bad. The person writing it obviously has very little idea what he is writing about.. Let me give some examples..
First, Sun will forego the PC OEM deals for StarOffice 6 because Sun Microsystems' main revenue stream comes from their own PC sales.
This is in reference to SUN not getting together with companies like Dell and Gateway to put StarOffice on their machines. The first thing that got me, though, was that it says that SUN's main income is from their PC sales. Last time I checked, SUN doesn't make PCs. And, while they may start in the near future, they certainly don't have any revenue from it now.
After years of protestation and lawsuits against Microsoft giving away IE for free, is Sun hypocritically hoping to create an illegal monopoly of their own by giving StarOffice 6 to students for free?
Again, just because you do something that mirrors what Microsoft does, does not make you Microsoft. Giving away software does not make you a monopoly. Immoral business practices do. Besides, as the author tries to mention, SUN makes its money on hardware (not PC sales), similar to Apple. All they're trying to do is show people there's an alternative to the Wintel platform. They're trying to show people that you don't have to have a box running windows to be productive. That you can have a Linux box (that they'd love to sell you in a few quarters) and run StarOffice on it and be doing just fine. As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with that. Another thing people need to remember is that there's a big difference between a non-monopoly business practices. If a non-monopoly says "If you don't put our software on all your machines, you can't put it on any, it doesn't matter, because the OEM has choices. When a monopoly does it, it is illegal, because the OEM has no real choice (go out of business?).
If the schools had actually purchased the software rather than acquired it for free, the deal adds up to a $5.7 billion (yes, billion with a "b") missed opportunity. That's $5.7 billion USD in sales that Sun will never see because they gave it away at a time when they don't need to be giving away $5.7 billion.
Oh come on, buddy. This is complete nonsense. While the numbers work out, it's meaningless. Software doesn't have intrinsic value. That's not like saying "I'm going to give away 100 cars." It's the same thing about trying to figure out the value of "pirated" software. You can't say you lost 40 millions dollars, because one million people "pirated" your $40 software. It just doesn't work like that. These schools wouldn't have paid $5.7 billion for this software, so SUN didn't give away $5.7 billion.
Anyways, the editorial just goes on and on like this.. it's truly painful to read.
Yes, please, will schools PLEASE start purchasing these low cost Windo$e alternatives? Can you imagine the level of computer competence grade schoolers would achieve if there were 10 networked Sun machines in every class? Kids sitting in front of a MS machine, being passively marketed to by MSN, are only going to become even more frustrated by technology. Put a 1.0 ghz Sun/Duron in front of them and watch them learn. "Hey I made a Web Server!" "Look! I built a Firewall!" "Teacher, how do I read a MAN?"
Namaste
Has someone told Sun what Low-cost PC means? I mean it. Are they really ready to sell Sun hardware at the $600 - $1100 dollar price point? The last time I checked the cheapest Sun workstation was $2700.00 from them and that was without decent hardware in it.
I really hope they aren't biting off more than they can shew as nobody is going to buy a $1400-$1900 sun workstation as a "low cost PC"
but that said... I will pay a premium if it is in fact Sun hardware and not a gigabyte board +intel or AMD+other generic in a regular box with a sun logo stuck on it. I already have a "Silicon graphics workstation" that is like that (Yes I pryed a SGI logo and the name sticker off of the @home hardware that was getting chucked... and yes it's on my dual PIII workstation at home.)
If it's SUN then gimmie! if it's intel... you can keep it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
These guys need to merge/linkup with peripheral manufacturers to offer X-ready (where X is the name of the alternate computer/OS package) peripherals for the new system. This is the bottleneck right now. The peripheral manufacturers won't supply timely (or at all) drivers for their equipment that works with Linux and other alternate systems. Supply a minimal number of printers/scanners/faxes that work out of the box with their computers. Not that I particularly like HP, but they would be an ideal partner in this.
Or even better--build one of those all purpose fax/copier/printer/scanner jobs that includes a free computer/OS in the package. The cost for the OS would be negligible, you could build the computer into the box to save on material costs, and have a keyboard/tablet hanging out the front that would double as the control panel.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
as I said above
its not really all that hard and they get the margins by putting on a smart card reader on it and asking you to buy a BIG SUN server to run your web portal and sign on DB
which makes sense because you where running you NIS+ on a SUN anyway and now you want to upgrade to liberty (-;
regards
John Jones
No, Sun wants to be MS.
Sod that.
How is Linux going to make the PC cheaper? Or are you just talking about the cost of purchase, not the TCO? In the enterprise, Linux is more expensive to run on the desktop than Windows is, because the most basic tools for Windows (Outlook, for one) don't exist in a usable form on Linux.
Okay, I've heard some bullshit today but this comment is utterly priceless. You really claim that:
1) Outlook is the most basic tool for windows
2) Outlook has no Linux analogue
and 3) The TCO of Linux is higher because it has no Outlook???
You're a dreamer, you are. That's precious.
Now if you'd said 'a decent GUI based file manager', that might have been different.
I'm now expecting an essay validating each of these points, please. Particularly interesting to me is your explanation as to why Outlook requires automatic execution of unsigned scripts from untrusted sources in multiple languages. Also, the exact cost of all the email viruses associated with Outlook use compared to those of every other mailer (TCO does include all that time spent dealing with virus infestations, you realise? And the money/time from all that virus scanning requirement. And so on). I'd also like you to explain to me how, if Outlook is a necessary 'basic' tool for 'the enterprise', how all those other companies that go for Lotus solutions, or indeed pure-Unix solutions, manage to survive. I worked for years at an R&D centre that used nothing but Suns. Gosh, no Outlook! No WINDOWS! How did we survive? Discuss.
If you really believe that Linux makes PCs more expensive, I'll tell you what, we'll test it. My father and I use Linux, my mother and little brother use Windows; I'll record the time I spend doing tech support on each of them, and if Windows costs less time for me than Linux, I'll pay you. However, based on last year, with three serious Windows file corruptions, trojans, and Sircam (bro' disabled the virus checker on Windows because 'it works faster switched off', and started using Outlook instead of the slightly safer alternatives because 'all of his friends do, and it's Microsoft, innit? ' - no, user stupidity is no excuse - it is a part of TCO too), versus, um, a few apt-gets and I believe one reboot, you're in with a good chance of owing me money.
Sun is going into a market they have not been in before- that of the desktop. Corporate desktop. They are 'invading' microsoft's space. Microsoft Windows cannot scale to 64+ processors as Sun Solaris can. So, how can Sun be in MS's crosshairs when they are not even in the same part of the market. IBM and Sun fight it out, not MS and Sun.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
The question is who can you buy a UNIX operating system from.
There is not only no monopoly but UNIX systems are available for free from multiple vendors.
Solaris is a *brand,* not an operating system per se, just as Ford and Chevy are both *cars.* Ford has a monopoly on the *trademark,* not the car.
KFG
We already have 4 dual processor (2x1.4gHz) suns running linux on the way. I'm very curious to see how the new sun achitecture compares to a slightly fast dual athlon running linux. Sun is starting to cover the clock speed gap. Will they keep the good architecture or pull an intel and downgrade P4 style? I wonder.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
>>Look at where it has gotten Sun shareholders.
No kidding. SUNW went under 3 today and their market cap is under $10B for the first time in over 5 years.
Even though I build my own PC's and download Linux, I support what Sun has done. If I was looking to buy a 2nd system to run Linux on I would buy one of these for a number of reasons :
a) Sun cases look cool.. and trying to find decent looking and inexpensive cases in the UK seems to be fruitless.
b) The quality of the kit should be pretty good.. I have a Sun Blade 100 and that system is very well built and reliable.
c) Even though Sun are a big company I still appreciate what they do for individual users - so I'd feel like I was helping a bit to keep them afloat.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Wait until Mom and Dad have to simply "open VI and edit lines out" to make something simple work. They'll think twice about loonix at home for sure.
Sun won't be competing with Microsoft, they'll be competing with Dell. Ah well, some of us have to learn the hard way I guess..
And when it comes time to make a resume, they can host the thing, but they can't get the tabs to align in the document :-)
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Sun needs a transition plan to make migration from the low end Linux/x86 based desktops and servers to their Solaris/Sparc based high end workstations and enterprise servers. Otherwise they will not be able to bring as much sales up to the higher tier. There are two ways to do this. One is to run Solaris on x86 hardware as the middle tier. The other is to run Linux on Sparc hardware as the middle tier. One of these approaches leaves Sun subject to the whims of another CPU maker, which has it's own plans for 64-bit domination. The other leaves Sun subject to the whims of a huge open source software community and a few choices in Linux distributions (such as Debian, Mandrake, and SuSE) as well as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Which way do you think would be better for Sun?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Nope. It's not a 1-to-1 replacement for Outlook. It won't work with Exchange 5.5, it doesn't support forms, public folders, journals, or a heap of other things. If your enterprise depends on Exchange-- and most do-- you're SOL even with Evolution.
Gee what a frickin brainstorm. Overengineerd hardware company makes overengineered PCs with 'value added' free OS. Can you imagien the service charges???? I can - they will suck.
First, Sun can't make low-end PCs themselves. If Sun makes it, it will cost too much. They have to outsource, in which case, they're a reseller adding cost without value. WalMart can deal with offshore manufacturers directly; they don't need Sun. Sun doesn't have a distribution channel for moving low-end boxes in volume; it probably costs their sales operation a few hundred dollars to sell and deliver anything. Sun isn't known as a consumer brand; they have no retail presence.
So what does Sun bring to the party? StarOffice?
It's 4:10pm EST as I write this.. there's not much Wednesday left. When will we get to see these new machines?
It's only early afternoon in SF but late afternoon seems weird for a product demo or press release. Apple, for example, seems to always have the keynote in the morning.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
It's plainly obvious why Sun is trying to throw the odious Star Office to every "student" in the world AND sell Linux machines - they need a big write-off this year. Everyone know that MS Office is THE standard in the business world. Walk into an office and tell them you don't know MS Word or Excel, but you do know Star Office, and you'll be laughed out of the building. Star Office is yet another "me too" product that will never catch on. As for selling Linux boxes, Linux don't sell very well because Linux users don't like to pay for anything. Sun should know that, but they want the tax break.
Man, you are such an asshole. Nevertheless, I will respond. Except to the stuff that just annoyed me, which I will simply ignore.
Yes, Outlook is an absolutely necessary tool for many-- possibly even most-- companies. I make no statement about whether this is good or bad, but it's true anyway. If your company has an Exchange/Outlook system in place, and you try to deploy Linux on the desktop, you will end up wasting a fortune and then going back to Windows anyway.
Look at it this way: you have a system that works. Not just well, it works really well. That system depends on Exchange and Outlook. You then try to bring in something like Linux, where the best you can do is Evolution with their connector product. Which isn't very well at all, because the connector uses WebDAV instead of MAPI, meaning you have to do a significant amount of work to your server to even support the connector, and it doesn't support key features like journals or forms. So you end up with a system that sort-of works, except for the things that don't. Not to mention the fact that you have to spend another fortune training up your support staff to deal with two different operating systems and two entirely different sets of troubleshooting procedures. It's a waste of time and money.
It's cheaper to just maintain the status quo.
I assert to you that it will not be possible for anybody to build a desktop system that fits into the modern enterprise as well as a Windows system can. The Exchange-based enterprise is not perfect. It could be improved in lots of ways. The only way to get on the desktop of the typical enterprise is to come up with something significantly better than the combination of Windows desktops, Windows servers, Outlook, and Exchange. It hasn't happened so far. Maybe it will some day, but if that newer, better system comes from the "free" software world, I'll eat my shoe.
Oh, and to address your comment about viruses, in the past three years my company has not been affected by a single virus. Why? Because we run virus scanners where they're appropriate. No problem there. So associating Windows with viruses like they're intrinsically linked is just FUD in the most literal sense: you're trying to spread fear by relying on the uncertainty of your audience to plant the seeds of doubt.
Now if you'd said 'a decent GUI based file manager', that might have been different.
What file manager? Use Outlook's public folders. All the important data gets stored on secure servers, indexed for easy retrieval, and backed up every hour on the hour. File managers are obsolete, my friend. Most people just don't know it yet.
Kids should not be learning how to make a web server in school. That's asinine. That's as useless as going to shop class to learn how to weld. Adminstration is a trade, and now a relatively low-end trade at that. Kids shold not be spending what little time they have in school concentrating on any one or two trades. That's ridiculous. Computers should be in schools as tools to help teachers teach, and as an after-school activity for a few young geeklings. That's it.
And if you want to argue as to usefulness of trades, I'd say that auto work is more useful than administration. Any fucking monkey can start a webserver or turn on a firewall. Not anybody can work on car engines. Besides, which is more useful in real life? Yeah. I thought so.
You should post more. I like the cut of your jib. These freaks who honestly believe that Linux is a decent, professional operating system need a wake-up call, and you and I are about the only people around here willing to give it to them.
- Sell Linux PCs at cost price and give away StarOffice
- ???
- Profit.
Sorry, couldn't resist.:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
...they won't be making their latest version of Solaris available to non-Sun platforms.
There is an article on eWeek that discusses how people are responding to Sun's refusal to release Solaris 9 to non-Sun x86 hardware.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
"At Sun $15.000 would qualify for that..."
Where have you been?
SPARC/Solaris Servers from Sun start at $995.
SPARC/Solaris Workstations from Sun start at $995.
I hope this move hurts Sun as much as it hurt SGI.
Which Distro will they use? The article doesn't say.
Wow, that is a scary site. It's like the wet dream of proprietary software salesmen. Anything you don't pay for is *evil*. If you even look at the CD twice you owe us an extra licence fee. Don't like it? 5 years in jail or be fined 3 months salary.
--
E_NOSIG
Why not Solaris? It's not like they'd have to pay royalties to anyone, or anything, or that it would cost them any more. And they could subsidize the Solaris developement by amortizing some of it across the new machines; they're going to have to do that anyway, with the Linux, if they plan on trading on their name that way.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me; maybe it's just some tail-tweaking, rather than something that's really going to happen?
This really feels like a big mistake. Remember when BMD came out with a low end car, and no one bought it because BMW meant "upscale", but the mere existance of the lowscale offering damaged their brand image?
-- Terry
Its easy as hell to work on an engine, and hell if you want to do it right you could even get the chiltons manual for the car and just follow the step by step instructions with pictures. It could be said for just about any trade where the result isn't something that has to be functional and pretty at the same time.
> Or are you just talking about the cost of purchase, not the TCO?
> In the enterprise, Linux is more expensive to run on the desktop
> than Windows is, because the most basic tools for Windows
> (Outlook, for one) don't exist in a usable form on Linux.
Outlook has very high TCO, higher than Windows and Linux combined
and any other office software you want to name into the bargain.
It roughly triples the number of times you have to reinstall Windows.
No sane admin would ever willingly permit Outlook in a multiseat
setting where TCO mattered.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
At least they're not going to abandon solaris x86... I just don't understand why Sun prefered Linux...
They could develop drivers for all the devices of the PCs they're going to sell. Since solaris x86 is free, the cost would be the same.
I'm working at a small software development company that also delivers on Solaris. It is so complicated to get Sun hardware or to get updates for compilers. It's just a hell of bureaucracy. I thought these guys should be interested in providing us with newest compilers and stuff to make us happy. But they are just arrogant. So drop Sun, use Linux!
I work for an engineering office that handles a lot of construction work in my school district. You learn a lot in this business.
In the great rush to get schools "into the 21st century", every school (8 elementary, 2 middle and 1 high school) has *at least* one computer lab, and an average of 4 computers *per room* in all but the High school (only 1 station per room there). From Kindergarten to 9th grade, these kids are never more than 20 feet from a CRT.
Each and every computer is running Win98 with a full install of MS Office Pro (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, Publisher, etc). Even the kindergarten computers. Why? To 5 year olds really need to make databases and spreadsheets? (Not that doubt they could, of course...)
The school district pays Microsoft approximately $11,000 per year for software licenses. That's cheap, because they get a huge discount for having everythig installed on *every* computer.
So of course, StarOffice was mentioned as a cheaper alternative. While the software cost would be much lower for licenses, apparently it would cost the district *more* to have had StarOffice installed instead of Microsoft's suite.
I couldn't get that number, but I did learn that the district spent $60,000 re-training the teachers and staff when they upgradeed their systems from *Win95*.
If it cost 60 grand to train these morons to use 98 instead of 95, I can't begin to imagine the cost of converting MSOffice to StarOffice.
Yeah, Microsoft's not a monopoly... they're drug dealers. I'm also glad I don't plan to have any kids.
The only way around this problem would be to not use Windows from the start. At least in a totally new environment it should be easier to train the staff; less confusing if for no other reason. More power to Sun Microsystems, I say.
Another user commented: "The people who should buy from Sun are (and i quote) markets such as corporate call centers, government and schools. These are the sort of folks who don't have a clue how to run their PC's. More importantly, they don't want to have a clue how to run them either."
You couldn't be more right.
=Smidge=
So Outlook roughly triples the number of times you have to install Windows, huh? Well, considering the number of times I've had to reinstall Windows is zero, I guess you're right. Three times zero is zero.
And as for your comment about "no sane admin," the majority is always sane, my small-minded friend. More of the Global 2000 use Microsoft Exchange and Outlook than don't. Obviously they are not all insane, as you would have us believe.
I agree with you cirriculm ideas and you're right. But if some teacher is going to purchase educational software as an "Aid", then why purchase the OS-platform that it runs on. And for people who say "it would take too much training for school teachers and administrators, I'd say "So what, tax payers are paying your ass." Learn how to install a Red Hat distro by booting from the CD. Or even worse, learn how to clone a clean hard drive. Isn't Open Office a word processor with spell check also? Why wouldn't you spend $300 for Office XP? You're fogetting that most car engines nowadays don't need their carburetors rebuilt or their valves adjusted. It's all done by Computers. So the next time a kid builds his own web interface that plugs into your car and fixes your knocking, who's the f***ing monkey?
Namaste
Anyway, this is not a nice or cute expression, and though you may think yourself clever for using it, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I believe they're actually making StarOffice free for educational use.
Contrast that to Microsoft which makes a 'donation' at list price and writes it off on their taxes, for a net gain.
Even if Sun is going the 'donation' route, the list price is only $70, so the exploit's not so nasty.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Teachers are paid on salary. They are already overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Asking one of these teachers to fight with a relatively obscure OS, and find non-existant software to say, help to teach her kids chemistry is fucking ridiculous. Computers are cute and all, but next time you get in a car, remember that the whole thing was deisgned by engineers (not IT grunts), the whole thing was manufactured by manufacturing experts, and the whole process was brought together by businesspeople. Computer people are just grunts, like like any other blue-collar profession. True, it needs to be done, but to teach it in school is completely arbitrary. I can get by without a computer. I can't get by without plumbing and electricity. Why not teach kids plumbing in schools? All kids aren't gonna be plumbers, that's why.
Its easy as hell to work on a computer, and hell if you want to do it right you could even get the WROX manual for the program and just follow the step by step instructions with pictures.
It is the only approach that makes any sense.
to Solaris. I have worked extensively with both and personal experience has shown me that Linux is a much better OS.
Sun is kidding themselves into thinking that Solaris is better and trying to brainwash the masses into thinking it too w/ their very public very sensational announcement.
GJC
Corporate games...
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
And since the headhunters will be running IE6 they will be able to read it. Well, if IE6 complies to standards and everyone here claims so. I use Mozilla anyway, on x86 and Mac.
Hey, there you go. Perfect! Exactly, why buy a Windows 2000 server for $3000, not including the Citrix software itself, along with the per seat licenses, when there are open source solutions? Teachers shouldn't be PC administrators I agree, but they also shouldn't be forced into huge budget cuts into their salary because of licensing fees.
Namaste
Cheap Linux PCs. What an origional idea! Maybe they can use little cubes for cases and paint them Cobalt blue. rightHand, I would like to introduce you to leftHand.
Giving away software does not make you a monopoly. Immoral business practices do.
Wrong. Monopolies are fine and dandy. Perfectly legal. The goal of every public business is to become a monopoly.
However once you are a monopoly, you have to play by a different set of rules, or the government will step in like they are with Microsoft.
"And like that
McNealy is getting too political in his diatribes against Microsoft. I feel he is not pushing for the Linux PC to help diversity in the OS market or even for the good of his own company, but simply to hurt Microsoft. The desktop PC market is in a standstill, with very thin profit margins. The merged HP is not going very well. I bet Sun won't make much money with this product, and a management change could cancel it. Microsoft will brag as a "proof" that Linux is not profitable and hurts business.
Man, you are such an asshole.
:-)
/home/user [conceptually private] and /mnt/share/user/, and nothing irrelevant, but haven't seen anything graphical for UNIX for file management that I would describe as particularly usable... It's a small complaint, of course.
:-)
And you, sweetheart
To rephrase; you're right that Outlook is a perfectly useful solution for, as you put it, 'the modern enterprise'. However, I suspect that it is not the only solution for 'the modern enterprise' - and that, furthermore, 'the modern enterprise' is an extremely broad category in which to work. You probably mean 'the place where foobar104 works'.
I find that there are many enterprises out there - modern or otherwise - that for various reasons including the ones you so adeptly identified, have concluded that making use of Windows, Outlook, and Unix is not altogether an effective solution. Rather than throwing, as it were, the baby out with the bathwater, they have instead chosen to avoid Outlook, or buy themselves a fix. And they have managed it too - I have thus far worked with only one company that made use of Outlook, and I have worked in a number of multinational corporations. I agree that it is a shame that Outlook is so spectacularly incapable of use in a 'hybrid' environment, since, as Slashdot has previously covered, there are few software options that approach its functionality - but not, oddly, none. Notes is still frequently used, though I personally am not a fan of either Outlook or Notes; both are a little buzzword- ridden and neither provide more than a fraction of the real potential that groupware has. Mostly they don't seem to be used for anything but filesharing, calendar, and email - so much for collaborative work.
Of course, if the status quo is Outlook, hostile to Unix, and it works with the organisation, there is no reason to change - but often, the status quo does not include Outlook.
Really, it's this that annoyed me so much with your original comment - the assumption that because Outlook was 'a solution', it must be 'the solution' - the one and only possible answer to a well-specified question. It's just a glorified mail server + database + calendar + contacts + so on... there are other ways of managing this information, and frankly, Outlook is no closer to the 'one and only solution' for groupware than Microsoft Research is, and it must be said that research in the field of collaborative work is generally pretty much stumbling in the dark right now. Marketing would have you believe it to be a magic bullet, but it's just an answer to some of the possible problems that some companies might face - to paraphrase Douglas Adams, Microsoft "know the answer, but they don't really know what the question is", in any particular case.
I agree, in your case, it works 'really well', at least, by your definition of 'really well' and for your definition of 'modern enterprise' - case studies would be really easy if all cases were identical, don't you think? One can put together an all-Microsoft solution and train one's company to work in such a way that their methods approach those that the software engineers were expecting when they designed their groupware. However, one might be losing out - maybe the methods the company already had were better?
It happens. I am reminded of a pilot groupware solution implemented for social workers in the UK - long on groupware/computer-supported collaborative work, and short on understanding of the original paper-based system. It replaced a two-computer-per-office system that was used to summarise information and a lot of paper; in practice, the paper was still used (try making notes on a laptop in rainy weather after six hours' travel) and the groupware was only touched when the manager was around - even though that groupware was being successfully implemented in other environments. Equally, people felt 'wrong' about it - choosing descriptions of human frailties from pull-down menus, having to learn how to inform the system when a client died - it was the wrong solution for their working environment. Read 'Plans and Situated Actions' - Suchman, 1987. "Ethnography allows us... to account for the situated and organisational aspects of work. These social, contextual and artefactual contexts of work, and the interactions between them, accounts for much of people's behaviour in the real world" - in other words, it's very difficult to explain how people work without being there. It depends very much on environment.
The Microsoft engineers are not in my office; they might be correct by default, or their software might be so flexible that it can be used for any situation; the second is demonstrably false given the lack of clients for so-called 'alternative OS's', and the first is only true for a small proportion of the number of enterprises out there, apparently including yours. Heck, a music studio where I worked still uses a system based around the Atari ST... and they seem pretty happy with it. It fulfils their requirements; their organisation is richer with it than without, and that is, after all, the point of a groupware solution.
As for decent GUI file manager, it has been my experience that whilst the fact of the matter is that information is stored centrally, many people are more comfortable doing rough work in an environment that is perceived to be separate from the group/shared/public environment. I concede that the Outlook package may support said illusion, though putting your private drafts in 'public folders' is a little counter-intuitive. Furthermore, I note that the actual mechanics behind a UNIX form of 'public folders' is a very short shell script... really, all I'd like to see is a nice clear graphical analogue of
And yes, I have not found Outlook to be effective, particularly due to viruses (but I'm not afraid of it - nor uncertain - nor do I doubt that it will irritate me again!). Though I am not working as a sysadmin, being in R&D, I have spent vastly too much of my time helping out colleagues, idiots from other companies, and family members, with various Windows - particularly Outlook - related issues. Of course, most of these cases were due to either human idiocy or dumb MCSEs, and if we all hired you, o wonderful one, instead of the tame MCSE (and if so much on NT/XP didn't require admin rights...), I'm sure we'd all become immune. I'd recommend you, except for your colourful language
MS has a tendence to take over a market, and spread to any adjacent markets. That is the only reason why people have IE, MS Office, NT Servers, etc.
By preventing MS from getting more, SUN is staying alive. MS has been for years trying to take over SUN (Server) market. Look what happened to Novel. (well novel had 2 problems, 1 being tcp/ip and the other being MS) But MS has a monopoly (desktop, etc) and is pushing it into the server. SUN is trying to make it so they are needed as servers, not ms as everything. MS brakes openGL, java, html, javascript, everything they touch. They don't touch things they don't plan on taking over and turning it into another monopoly, or to streathen a monopoly.
What SUN should be doing, is working closely with a few linux distros, to get it to work great as a client to its servers. And to get it to run java perfectly, and fast. SUN doesn't need to sell Linux to beat back MS, but they think they can make money using linux, when all they need to do is make it stronger as a client.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
Perhaps the difference, however, is that Microsoft is a judicially declared Monopoly, whereas Sun is not. So, the anti-competitive..nay...competitive behaviour of Sun is NOT on par with the same behaviour of Microsoft. This fact is one of the big reasons Microsoft fought such a declaration so hard--they kept saying, to the effect, "we're just competing in the marketplace."
From a certain perspective this actually may seem unfair to Microsoft, but remember that the determination that MS was a monopoly was based, in no small part, due to the illegal activities that they were engaged in to obtain/maintain an unfair market advantave. So, punitive actions are certainly justified to try to bring it back into line and even the competitive landscape--to give other companies such as Sun the opportunity to succeed that they were previously denied by Microsoft's behaviour.
Just my $0.02.
They're call Cobalt's.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Sun Microsystems Inc. should leave the production of low-end 'Lintel' machines to Acer, HP, and other Taiwanese clone makers who are more experienced in this segment and have stronger relationships with low-end Intel customers. In fact, I believe Sun could more effectively leverage their intellectual property by adapting their Solaris/SPARC[tm] platform for the low end - and then hamper Linux completely. A petition is available to sign on this matter: petition for Sun, which refers to the website scottmcnealy.com !
Yes and no. Its a valid point, but not as clever a point as some Linux critics might think.
First, assuming you must use a text editor, there are more user-friendly editors out there. Many that are included as a standard install in many default distros. Simple default GUI editors will also work fine.
Secondly, there are some decent GUI configuration managers included on various distros. They'll handle the simple configs most home users will need to deal with - and handle it well. Mom and Dad may never have to know their configurations are stored as simple text files.
Finally, if Mom and Dad have ran in to a serious issue, they are beyond the point of phone tech support no matter what OS they're using. Sure. They'll try. But ultimately they're in for a good deal of frustration. Its much less painful for the end user, and less milage on their local friendly helpdesk, if they simply hire in an expert to handle the problem.
How often Mom and Dad end up in the third situation may or may not be an issue with their OS of choice.
I always thought that the "killer app" for Exchange / Outlook was scheduling. That bit was done right.
Everything else looks like nice little addons - but who actually uses them? I've used public folders (and I know orgs in my center use them). But it seems to be something that was used "because it was there" more than it being a killer feature. I don't know anybody who uses journals or forms. In other words, all these other features seem far from compelling. And, in fact, may be easily replaced by other technologies.
If it weren't for scheduling.
Your comment was too long and boring. Didn't read it. Don't care.
You're both right and wrong, I think. Scheduling is a big part of what makes Exchange cool, but public folders, forms, and journals are pretty damn useful as well. Public folders make NAS systems obsolete. Forms are like little mini-applications that can be used for anything from sending out birthday party announcements to expense reports. Journals are a little known, seldom used, incredibly powerful feature. Not only can I tell you, for example, that I worked on this document, but I can tell you exactly when I worked on it, because it's all recorded in my journal
First off who are they going to sell these to?
Educators and bussinesses already have contracts with Dell or HP. Also they want to lower support costs by standardizing on a single hardware platform that runs on a standard set of software applications. I do not think any IT manager would like some foreign sun's mixed with HP's for support reasons. Another reason is to just look at SGI's attempt to enter the linux/NT market a few years ago. It failed. As a CIO would you risk your job and hundreds of million's of dollars on supporting a platform that could turn into a in today and out tommorow platform? I don't think so. Infact many CIO's who standardized on NT did so because they were afraid Unix would dead by now. Silly as it may sound, this was common in 96 and 97 when NT 4 came out. Just read any IT magazines from the time. They all had articles like why buy a cad workstations from SGI when you have all these fast pentiums running Windows! Or "Unix vs NT" in the cover. Sadly this started the MCSE craze.
My prediction is that it will fail misserable due to all the things I mentioned above. The desktop war is over and already won. Rob Young was right on why redhat should stay away from the desktop. Sun needs to find more ways to milk what they currently have. They need to cut some R&D work in java or stop giving away the sdk's and start charging for them. For bussiness (not ethical) reasons they need to stop funding java and giving it away. They do make money by having platform providers sign deals with them to have java ported to there computers but its not profitable enough. Sun is seriously in danger of going under in 2 or 3 years! $2 a share! These pc's wont save them. I know they tried to get into the thin client and appliance markets but failed at that. Poor sun.
http://saveie6.com/
I know a primary school which has a lab with I think 12 sunrays running off a master server.
From what I've heard it works great and kids just dont have any trouble with new technology.
Surely it's best to give kids the most diverse start possible. I hope that I'll be able to speak a second language fluently to help my children learn that, and I fully intend to have a mix of computers in the house to give them a good grounding.
I grew up with MacOS and Dos and understand both of them pretty damn well.
Let's think about this for a sec...
This is all great unless:
Must be McNealy's scorched earth policy. How long until SUNW is delisted and the biz reviews start flowing? Sad to say, I think this company is going the way of Cray Research.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Sun has always been donating their Sun Sparc workstations to Universities(full labs of them here), why is it a big deal when they decided to donate cheaper things? :)
Their stock price should drop in response to their cheapy decision. j/k
The article makes some decent points, but while I questioned Microsoft's motives, I never really had a problem with them giving away free stuff to schools, even if it did mean people were "embracing the Microsoft future." But what really pissed me off was Microsoft trying (and succeeding? I can't remember the resolution of the case.) to push "donations" of software and hardware as reparation for a civil suit they lost in a court of law. I don't think Microsoft should be able to backdoor their way out of legal damages by throwing in some token hardware, and then just picking whatever price they want for the software, to make up the difference. Until Sun starts doing that, I say good for them that they're helping schools.
-Mike-
I sincerely hope that in the next two to three years, Microsoft will lose an enormous amount of market share in its operating system ventures, as well as the respect of nearly all users. In addition, I hope they're forced to release Linux versions of all their major applications, with government-mandated fully documented file formats. And I hope nobody buys those defective programs anyway.
Who is to say that these will only be sold into markets which have lots of DELL of HP? There are a lot of companies out there that run a lot of Sun hardware at the high end. Implementing Sun Linux at the lower end for these companies makes a lot of sense. For starters you get rid of the finger pointing involved when something goes wrong or doesn't interoperate properly, as you are looking at a single vendor who has committed to getting it right. The liklihood of the kit actually interoperating properly is also substantially raised.
Sun is also doing a lot more than just the PCs and Linux. That's just what's making the headlines at the moment. As an example, just this morning I saw an ad for one of the new Nokia phones. The advertorial made a big thing about it being java enabled. Licensing Java engines into phones is certainly one way to make some money. You've also got N1 on the horizon.
I own shares in Sun, I'm not selling, in fact I'm buying.
Hmmm. I'll have to play with these features a bit more out of curiosity.
;) I'll chat up my local Exchange admins a bit more on the subject.
I find public folders more of a half-hearted stab at groupware. I think I see what you're saying about it replacing a NAS system. But I find it hard to completely swallow.
Still. Public folders are easily replaced. Arguably with better technology.
Forms still sounds like fluff. And although the journal might be a kind of cool feature to play around with, it still sounds like a feature that just isn't usefull to most people. Its something else I'll have to poke around my environment and see if I can't find users of these features.
...by the Washington Times which is located in - duh - Washington. A rather large closed-source OS vendor is also located in Washington. Coincidence? Perhaps. I believe I will investigate this further.
Or even further back, "A GUI install", "a desktop environment", "a decent GUI mail client", "Hardware OpenGL acceleration", and hell, why not bring it up, "a TCP/IP stack".
Just be patient. If the present trends continue, the functionality you need will appear in time.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Patience my lad. Remember the days when you could put things like "A plausible office suite" and "a fully functional web browser" in those parentheses?
You mean, like, today?
Face it, man. Linux desktop software is of uniformly bad design and low quality. Even in those cases where you could replace a better desktop system-- a Mac or a PC-- with Windows, you'd be a fool to bother.
Especially with software, which is not donated, but licensed. You are not free to do as you wish; the restrictions you agree to have an economic value -- they may in fact put you in the practical position of surrendering cash in the future.
When donating GPL'd software (Linux), or software which is based on well documented and open file formats (StarOffice) that can be read by GPL'd software (OpenOffice), you are making a donation which has no strings attached. It's a very different thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But you'd be a fool not to notice that the linux desktop situation has improved dramatically over the past few years. Just because it's not ready today for you doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
So you're trying to say that Linux may be a useful desktop operating system someday? Can't hardly argue with that. Can't hardly bring myself to care, either. In three years Linux may reach the point where it's comparable to the Windows or Mac OS operating systems of today... by which time those operating systems will be three years further along.
Configure your default printer with your favourtie shell, or using your printcap or whatever you are using for printing configuration, then lpr should be enough to print anything....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Anything that works in a similar fashion that does not have the same licensing nightmares is an imrpovement.
For starters nobody can come, knock in your door and try a MS sponsored software audit: "Linux shope here pal, StarOffice site license as well, so move on and extortionate other companies..."
IANAL but write like a drunk one.