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Sun Negotiating With Wal-Mart Over Java Desktop
An anonymous reader writes "According to an EWeek article, Sun is challenging Microsoft on a new front: the consumer market. Believing its Java Desktop System is "a more effective home and retail solution," the company is negotiating with major retailers Wal-Mart and Office Depot to include the Java desktop on consumer PCs and laptops."
"An IT manager, who asked not to be named, said he could not understand why a user would trade one proprietary desktop for another. "I personally keep Java off my computer because it crashes the system," he said. "If Sun had the interests of the customer in mind, then the Sun desktop would be written in C and donated to Linux. Sun is no better than Microsoft."
Hey, MORON! Java Desktop is NOT powered by Java, but rather Gnome2 and Star Office. Jeez, where do they find these IT managers.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Here: Java Desktop to Maybe Help Brits Stay Healthier, Cheaper?" and here "What does 'Java-based' actually mean any more?"
Did you notice how many posts here assumed that Java platform has anything to do with this Java Desktop System???
Even Java OS was mentioned!!!
People, Sun JDS is a Gnome based Linux distro with some Java apps on it. It is not written in / does not utilize Java platform. See OSnews review of JDS or Slashdot review of the review.
As soon as Linux scales well to 128+ CPUs with full binary compatibility (no recompile) and has hot swap CPU/MEMROY/Motherboard support. People who think that Solaris must suck becuase it lacks a cool interface are missing the point.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
"Javascript" was originally LiveScript and the name was changed by Netscape as a marketing ploy, not Sun.
blah blah blah....
drightler@technicalogic.com
Okay... so we can all agree that calling this "java desktop system" is really confusing and fuels misconception about the product. The question is -- will this sort of branding dilute the meaning of "java" to that of ".NET"? ;-)
-m
Obviously, you know very little about Sam Walton (the founder of the Wal-Mart chains). He was VERY into MADE IN AMERICA for those of you old enough to remember. It was only AFTER his death that it has become impossible to find something there which is NOT Made In China. Please do not curse someone because their legacy has been corrupted.
And even then, there's not much hardware that scales like Sun's does. Think about this: if a processor has a bit of memory in cache, and another processor updates that value in RAM the original processor now needs an updated value. Scale that over 100+ processors.
Intel processors can't do it.
Yet Sparc/Solaris does it damn near linearly - for a hundred or more processors.
Where else but Sun can you get 100 or so 64-bit processors with uniform access to half a terabyte of RAM? Right here.
Yes, I know who invented Javascript. But Netscape couldn't have made the change without Sun's permission. So somebody at Sun had to decide that using "Java" to describe a language that had only incidental connection to the Java platform was a good idea.
The only use java desktop could possible have, is if you own a sun workstation and your stuck with CDE and compiling gnome by source is too much of a pain.
Unless there is some other features in Sun's version that I am not aware of, but other then that its a waste of money for something they already have.
http://saveie6.com/
A yearly subscription fee???
Taken from the sun.com:
Pricing
Q.
How much does Java Desktop System sell for?
A.
There are two available pricing options for Java Desktop System:
$100 / desktop / year. An OEM volume tier pricing schedule is also available.
$50 / employee / year for Sun Java Enterprise System customers.
A special promotion is also planned that reduces by 50% the first year price of either of the above two options. This promotion is in effect until June 2, 2004. See:
How to Buy.
Q.
Why would I purchase a per desktop license at $100 when the per employee license is available at only $50?
A.
The per employee pricing is available only if you purchase the software for all employees of your company. If only some employees will use the Java Desktop System, it may be more economical to purchase per desktop licenses.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I would dare say that Python is *extraordinarily* easy to get up and running, more so than Java. You can do extremely powerful things and very easy things with Python. And if you want clean cross-platform development environment, it fits well, even with GUI if you accept wxPython. I've been blown away at the ease of things when I did PyGTK, and when I wanted something that looked less out of place in Windows and that would work on OSX, I picked up wxPython and was simply amazed at how cleanly it slipped into Windows and OSX, with native widgets and all.
I know Java, and it truly does provide a far richer development environment when compared to C/C++ (well, C/C++ nearly catches up if you allow for MFC/KDE/Gnome/Cocoa/host of other libraries, but those are all platform dependent), but the syntax isn't that much easier to handle, so it isn't a good VB-killer candidate. Python syntax is extremely simple and scales well for complex tasks. I don't want to inflame perl advocates, perl is more powerful and easy for many tasks, but the syntax of python caters well to readability for learning and for the average programming tasks.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This article does a good job of conveying WalMart's reach. Microsoft rules the desktop, but WalMart rules retail.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The cost of the license is not $100 per year. It is $100 period for a perpetual license (actually $50 at the moment as a promotional price). That cost includes 1 year of software maint and 60 days installation support.
Just in case you were wondering the compatibility with Office would be Open Office (or maybe they point to Star Office).
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
I'd suggest that Sun has been building something pretty serious, one careful step at a time.
In order to challenge Microsoft they need to see some other OS on PCs. On a practical level it doesn't matter what OS, as long as it's not Windows.
But as noted, it's applications that drive PC purchases, not the OS. So what has Sun done?
Purchased StarOffice, spun off OpenOffice, and this week added support for the latter. For 95% of people the Sun office suites will handle anything that they want to do, as well as saving in MS compatible formats. It may not be perfect, but it's certainly Good enough. Better than MS Works in any event.
Add Mozilla and maybe Evolution for e-mail and you've covered the bulk of most people's activities.
So Sun can offer a non-Windows OS, a non-Windows software package. Bundle the new PC with a printer and Monitor, maybe a scanner, and you have a complete package that will suit most folks. If it does these things, and maybe connects with their digital camera, then they don't care about OSs and Application names.
The only thing left is marketing. Sell a similar box to say a fraction of the population of China and your per unit costs drop fast. Fast enough that you can also sell to WalMart, make a profit, and allow them to undercut other retailers.
Sure, there will be some problems supporting software and other hardware, but It still looks to me like Sun has a good chance of starting to eat into Microsoft's market share.
Barry
Three Squirrels
128 cpus? 2.6 kernel
no recompile? awww, shucks, I'm running a 128 cpu box and I don't know how to recompile!
If you're running a 128 CPU box, lack of knowledge will not be your problem, SLA's will be. If Linux is in there, you *will* only get to use an 'enterprise' flavour of Linux or you're on your own. Redhat or SuSE. You can't recompile your kernel even if you wanted to (not that you would) or you'd lose support.
Is Sun selling Solaris separate from 128 cpu boxes? Or are they installing Solaris on those boxes when setting them up for customers? Is IBM setting up linux on their 128 processor boxes? Or are they selling 128 processor boxes and handing the operating system to customers in boxes, requiring customers to recompile?
Hot swap? Who gives a rat's ass? Haven't you seen the latest sales? Big iron is out, clustering is in. You don't need hotswap anything when clustering, that includes drives. Just ask Oracle.
Let me tell you as someone who has just spent the last 3 weeks evaluating Oracle RAC for a major outsourcing company. My recommendation will be: stick to plain Oracle on mid-range Sun hardware with FOM software, this stuff is waay too immature and it sucks badly for even moderate OLTP workloads. Extended distance clustering? Forget it.
You pick the absolute smallest part of the market, 128 cpu boxes, which in some quarters absolutely no company sells, and use that to slam linux over the entire server market? Get a life.
The smallest part of the market has the most money to spend and are often extremely loyal. No one in their right mind deploys mission critical applications on a Solaris instance with that many CPU's because CPU's have about the worst MTBF after disks and PSUs - stick 128 CPUs in there and you'll be rebooting every few months! You deploy these boxes underspec'ed, partition them and dynamically add and remove boards between them as the business requires.
Let us know when Solaris fits in less than 1 MB of space, when Solaris is running on cell phones, when Solaris is used as device drivers, when Solaris is used in routers, when Solaris is used in mesh networks, when Solaris is used in embedded devices, when Solaris is used in consumer electronics, when Solaris...
Solaris isn't designed for those applications. Neither is windows (just look at the train wreck that is PocketPC), neither are the BSDs, neither is Linux. Is kernel 2.6 going to fit in 1MB? I'd be surprised, it was hard enough getting a 2.4 kernel with PCMCIA and soundcard support + libm and mpg123 onto a 1.4MB floppy disk 3 years ago.
You're confusing open source with open systems. The interfaces *must* be open, the source is nice to have open. You'd be mad to deploy an enterprise UNIX on consumer devices and even madder to do the reverse.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
I use Eclipse, I won't go back to NetBeans. But the reason is the refactoring tools and very nice plugins, not Swing. SWT doesn't come close to being a general GUI API. It was made for Eclipse, and has enough features for many but not all apps.
My app requires inner frame windows, anti-aliasing and compositing, custom window frames - things I can't do with SWT. With Swing this stuff is trivial. Then again, I think Swing has a nice easy API though some people think otherwise.
Maybe not! Check this presentation out from the sun website.. It demos their new Project "Looking Glass" for desktops. It looks amazing!!! Wonder when they will package it on the desktop systems. This sure looks compelling enough for the average user..