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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.
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
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.
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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
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.