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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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I honestly worry about the number of brain cells that Hemos and others like him are firing on, at times.
Every single time an article about Sun/Solaris comes out, someone (often the original poster) will say, "but Linux does xxx, so we don't need this!"
Everybody chant the following mantra: Solaris is not Linux. Linux is not Solaris. There is room for both.
Do we need this laptop? Well hell, do we need laptops at all? Is there some reason we NEED a Linux laptop over one running Win2k? Of course not!
That said, some things are easier under Linux that Windows. (and vice versa!) Some things are more mature under Solaris than Linux (or maybe all things?). Some people prefer Solaris, some prefer Linux, some prefer Windows, and some preferred OS/2. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY do we have to say "but Linux..." EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME ANYTHING ABOUT ANY OTHER PLATFORM IS MENTIONED?????
OK, rant off. Just had to get that off my chest.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
but with the TiBooks and Linux working on laptops, how much do people need Solaris laptops?
Well, I can tell you that there are certainly a number of users in the military as well as applications that certain government and quasi government agencies use running on Solaris. A few years ago at the Whitehouse, I noticed a number of Solaris workstations and the first laptop running Solaris I had ever seen. I don't know about things currently, but I expect there to be more Windows machines there now than there used to be. Although our Veep Dick Cheney appears to use a TiBook.....
Additionally, the TiBook is limited to 1GB of RAM (hardware limited NOT the OS which can address much more) and there are number of users in the sciences and video editing markets who would like portable 2GB workstations, but given Apple's focus on video editing, I would expect the next TiBook revision (not the one next week) will address more RAM.
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I got a Tadpole Sparcbook 2 from work. About a month later, my apartment was broken into and it, among other things was stolen. So my girlfriend was calling all the local pawn shops to make sure they would keep an eye out for it. I came through the door on such a call and she said 'I'm tired of dealing with this guy, he wants to talk to you'. And so I answered and he asked what type of Laptop it was, and I replied with Tadpole Sparcbook 2. He said he didn't recognize the brand and if it was Intel or a Mac, and I said neither, it is a Sparc, and he replied that all computers were either Intel or Mac, even if rebranded something else. He asked if it ran DOS or Mac, and I said "SunOS". He said he didn't want to know the application I run on it, but what comes up when I turn it on before running anything. Finally I said 'If something comes into your store that looks like a laptop but you don't know what the hell it exactly is, it's probably mine...
Evidently no one else knew enough to buy it either, and so when they caught the guy a year later, that was the only thing of ours they had not managed to offload. When I went to the police to reclaim it, I was fully prepared to go to lengths to show I knew the password, but they said 'just take it'. Then an officer asked me if that was a good brand of laptop and would I recommend it for their college aged kid....
Oh the nostalgia working on that brings me... SunOS 4.1.1... As an aside, anyone know where I could get a replacement battery, software updates, and/or the little scsi plug adapter for this sucker?
Also have a new iBook (for when I need battery or don't want to take forever to do anything), and bought my Fiancee a PC laptop (linux/WinXP dual boot).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
A few years ago, I travelled around Europe supporting my company's product on site. I'd try to fix a bug, then send the patch back to the US to be built (no source code could ever touch a client's computer). Turnaround times were over a day, due to the time change.
Then I got one of these (for hrumptyhrumptens of thousands of dollars). It paid for itself in a month. I could do builds on-site, leading to turaround times of less than an hour. I no longer had to get a hotel for most support visits! I sure had a need for a non-Linux notebook.
Of course, it radiated so much heat out the keyboard that my hands would just drench the thing in sweat. That got a little gross. But it worked like a champ.