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New Tadpole SPARCbook RSN
Jon Masters wrote to us in regards to the SPARCBook 6500 from Tadpole. Solaris 9, 4 gigs of RAM and all that - but with the TiBooks and Linux working on laptops, how much do people need Solaris laptops?
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There are some apps that people need to run on Solaris on a mobile workstation -- government comes to mind.
with the TiBooks and Linux working on laptops, how much do people need Solaris laptops?
Where else can you get a 64-bit laptop?
- An administrator of a fully SPARC-based network
- Someone in scientific or industrial applications who need more than the 1 GB RAM that the TiBook supplies; with these specs (4 GB RAM, 160 GB max harddisk) it could even work quite well as a demonstration or temporary replacement server
- Someone with legacy Solaris programs that they need to make transportable
- A person who develops for Solaris
- Someone who just plain prefers Solaris to Linux (believe it or not, they exist)
Just because you personally do not have a use for this device does not mean that no one has a use for it.These sort of things are great to use as portable demo systems for software that runs on solaris. I've seen some older x86 laptops running solaris for this purpose (don't ask me, I didn't install them)
If you're developing software with six layers of abstraction between you and the box, buy all means by a PowerBook (they're ever cute), and develop it there. I'm sitting here next to an HP workstation for which I had to write 5000 lines of C for a particularly stressed application. Writing it using my (more powerful) Linux box and porting it over would have been a huge mistake.
In using a close match for the target platform I discovered a bug in their libraries that I would not have otherwise caught, and was familiar enough with the debugging utilities of the box to use them remotely on the servers on which this app. lived. Since I had written the app. at exactly the same OS level as the target system, I new it wasn't a porting bug and that it wasn't a version bug. This saved me time far more valuble than the cost of my HP workstation. People who look down their noses at this laptop either code at very high levels or don't code at all.
Believe it or not, there are still people that haven't ported their software to linux. They need Solaris laptops (or worse yet, they lug around a workstation) to show off their wares to potential customers.
Personally, I think it's silly. Porting to linux is a great idea for a number of reasons, the ability to run on a plethora of cheap laptops not being the least.
and the ability to run your applications without rebuilding.
Plus if your trying to sell something that runs on Solaris wouldn't it be good to demo it on solaris? For example, if the customer cannot come to you.
Also as far as server fail-over you could use one of these temporarily to host a webserver, db, hell anything you want. If the battery works like most laptops it would last at least 1 hour with a heavy load and 2+ with a moderate load. Try that with a UPS for around $8000 (SPARCs are damn expensive).
Basically, anybody stuck with software that is only compiled for Solaris/SPARC. It's not going to be much of a replacement for a laptop; but it's useful for people like sales droids demoing their company's software, people using niche software that's only supported on Solaris etc.
If you just want a laptop, it's not interesting, go and buy an Apple, Sony, Toshiba or whatever. If you need a portable SPARC, it's going to be amazingly useful. Carrying around a Sun Fire 15k all day is rather tiring.
The Slashdot crowd are the Beavis & Butthead of the IT industry. Well, maybe not all of you. :)
J.
Hmm.
I was sitting here laughing about Sun's "Death Throes," and then thought about their stock price for a minute, and decided that the business world needs to be blown up in its entirety.
Sun is a healthy, prosperous company. They have a BIG market share in server rooms (especially in the geophysics/oil&gas world), they're producing excellent hardware, they've got a top-notch OS, and...
their stock price is floating around $3, making them ripe for a takeover by quite a few companies.
It's stupid. Their stock price, like that of many other companies, has no bearing on their health as a company anymore. There's simply no connection between stock price and performance, either good OR bad.
Bah. No real point. Just disgusted with big business.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"Why is CDE still a viable window manager?"
I can think of two reasons:
1) It never was.
2) Because Gnome 2.0 hasn't hit final release yet. That's where Sun is going from CDE, and good riddance!
"Linux a good all-around choice for those who do a little work on Unix"
Oh, absolutely it is! No argument from me on that aspect--three of my machines at home run Linux! What I object to is the assumption (or occasionally flat out claim) that Linux is (a) a better solution always and forever; and (b) therefore the only one that should be talked about. It amounts to the same sort of egotistical empire-building and chest-beating attitude that Microsoft is always accused of.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
If *you* want to carry a pizza-box Sun on Caltrain and use one of the few cars that still have electric outlets, go ahead...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Last throes???
First off, this isn't even a Sun product, it's a _tadpole_ product.
Secondly, why do you assume Sun is dying?
As long as there are Oracle shops who need their DB to be highly available, there will be a Sun Microsystems.
"- but with the TiBooks and Linux working on laptops, how much do people need Solaris laptops? "
Alot of people who have jobs tend to use Solaris to get work done, so a Solaris based laptop might be nice. I know this will come as a shock but not everyone thinks Linux is the end all OS.