Sun Announces Its First Laptop

boarder8925 writes "Enterprise computer maker Sun Microsystems announced its first-ever laptop yesterday, saying the machine was designed to let engineers and scientists perform demanding computer tasks away from their desks. Sun, which has seen sales fall for the last four years, said that it was also lowering prices for some of its computers by up to 40 percent."

Comments

Partnering with Sun?

[XorNand]

Running my own small VAR/intergrator shop, Sun has really piqued my interest recently. Right now, I'm kinda in limbo as far as aligning myself with a server vendor.

I can't stand dealing with HP on a number of levels, one being how they've handled the Proliant brand of servers. Dell couldn't possiblity have a decent channel partner program since their whole business model is focused on direct sales. IBM is an option, but it's apparent that they're trying to get out of the hardware business and further into the more lucrative services biz. The (obvious) alliance between IBM Global Services and IBM's hardware divisions would make me feel like I'm sleeping with the devil. The big selloff to Lenovo was the real wakeup call for me. And rounding out the bunch: Toshiba seems to only be half interested in playing in the space, and their lackluster offerings reflect that.

Sun interests me because they have brand recognition and seem to be increasingly investing in the market. Until rather recently, I didn't even know that they sold wintel boxes. However, news such as the release of this notebook further shows their intent on being a contendor. My biggest concern is that Sun gear tends to overly pricey, but if they're addressing that I might just start buying from them. Does anyone have experience with partnering with Sun on the hardware end of things? What kind of reputation do they have? Or can anyone suggest another server vendor that I could investigate? I realize there are a thousand white box vendors out there, but I'm more interested in a mature partner program: coop marketing opportunities, top-notch support resources, etc.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

My biggest concern is that Sun gear tends to overly pricey, but if they're addressing that I might just start buying from them.

While Suns tend to be pricey, it's because their built like tanks (both in terms of chasis/frame, and from CPU and internal layout). Like Macs, they're designed to work well, and you have to pay the designers.

A while ago AnandTech had a review on Sun's V40z.

You could also call up Sun and ask them for a loaner. They frequently let let people try out machines for a couple of weeks to run them through their paces. You can get either Solaris or Linux installed. BTW, make you open the box up and look at the internals: they're very well designed from a space, air flow, and maintenance point of view (part of the cost).

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[ericspinder]

Until rather recently, I didn't even know that they sold wintel boxes.

Because, until recently, they didn't. I've worked with applications running on Sun boxes for a number of years, at one point during the tech boom, they were a must have, but now they are just over priced. Sure this article talks of some lower prices (for wintel desktops) but I'm sure they still want big money for anything that can be called a server.

If you are looking for a partner, choose a Linux builder, there's plenty of them out there,many with the warrenty and service plans which I am sure your customers are looking for, don't be afraid to 'go local' with a white box builder. Some are really good, and they might even be able to throw some business your way.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[alienw]

If you want to have every problem imaginable, go with a white-box builder. Hardware these days usually has very poor compatibility, produces lots of heat, and has other issues. A shop that slaps together PCs with no regard for quality assurance, engineering, and compatibility testing will sink your business in no time, and most local shops are exactly like that.

Unlike Sun or Dell or any other large commercial maker, a small shop won't have a compatibility testing lab where machines are subjected to hundreds of tests to verify performance. They are generally happy if the box gets to the POST screen. When compounded with the fact that Linux is rather picky about hardware (due to varying driver quality), you really don't want to buy an untested, unproven solution from some garage-based PC builder.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[IANAAC]

While Suns tend to be pricey, it's because their built like tanks (both in terms of chasis/frame, and from CPU and internal layout).

While that used to be true, I don't think it's true anymore. You can still find good, solid boxes, but the parts inside fail every bit as much as our Dells and Proliants. Everything from disk drives, to backplanes to memory. All of these have failed on me at some point in the last year with three year old boxes. Truth be told, our IBM x-series cluster has outlasted any other piece of hardware in our shop.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Johnboi Waltune]

I'm just an average geek, and over the years I've built dozens of systems using various Linux distros, all versions of Windows, and hardware from hundreds of manufacturers.

Many of them I have built for friends and family for only the cost of parts and maybe some barter. (I don't do that too much anymore because it's cheaper and easier to order a system from Dell, plug everything together, and just migrate their files and settings.) Recently, I've built a few PVRs after someone sees mine and simply must have one of their own.

Anyway, all of the machines I've built have been rock-solid stable and none have come back to me because of some goof up I made deciding on a configuration. If I'm not even in the white-box business and I can do that, you have to assume white-box builders have a dozen proven configurations that meet the assorted needs of almost everyone who walks into their shops. Maybe they use their customers as beta-testers, but if they couldn't deliver a solid configuration, they'd soon be out of business.

The real problem with white-box builders is something you totally failed to mention: they can't really compete with Dell et. al. in price anymore. PCs have become a commodity and margins are so slim, companies that deal in massive volumes are the only ones that are competitive on price.

I can't really say for sure, but I suppose the whitebox PC builders -- those of them that are left, in my town there are only a few remaining -- survive on jobs that are very customized to a customer's unusual needs (PVR, uber-gaming rig, case modding, selling hard to find or import parts, etc...) I don't really know for sure how those guys stay afloat since I haven't done business with any of them in several years.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[AstroDrabb]

Why did mods mod up the GP and not this? I always hear about how "Sun boxes are tanks". However I have not seen that to be the case. Sun boxes fail as much as any other box. A Sun server will have redundant parts, just as any other real server should have. I work at a fortune 500 and all of our Oracle and PeopleSoft servers are running on Sun/Sparc boxes (though I pushed for x86 Linux which was 1/3 the cost and at least twice the performance, though I digress). In the past year we have had two processors fail, some memory sticks fail and about 8 NICs fail on our Sun boxes. So exactly _where_ is this great Sun/Sparc reliability? I will admit that Sun has very good enterprise class support, though so do many other big vendors. Sun doesn't make all the internals, just like no other major U.S. computer vendor does. So your are really not going to get any more hardware reliability from a Sun/Sparc server than you would get with a _much_ faster and far less expensive x86 based server. Heck, if you don't need more than a 2-way box, you can get better price and performance from an Apple Xserve G5.

Your not going to get any more reliability out of a Sun server than you would get with an equivalent, yet less expensive, x86 based server.

Oh, and to get back on topic, why would someone want a dog-slow Sparc for a laptop? Is there really any software out there that _only_ runs on Sparc Solaris and not x86 Solaris or Linux? Your going to get far more performance and a much better price out of an x86 laptop than a Sparc based one. Just RTFA! The Sparc laptop is $3,400! The specs on it suck. 512MB and 40GB? For $3,400 for a laptop, I better be getting some state-of-the-art hardware and not some dog-slow sparc with poor specs. ; )

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[illumin8]

Does anyone have experience with partnering with Sun on the hardware end of things? What kind of reputation do they have? Or can anyone suggest another server vendor that I could investigate? I realize there are a thousand white box vendors out there, but I'm more interested in a mature partner program: coop marketing opportunities, top-notch support resources, etc.

As a former Sun Systems Support Engineer (SSE, basically onsite hardware/OS support), I can probably answer this for you.

First of all, you're right about the price. Sun servers, especially the UltraSparc line of servers tend to be much more pricey than your average x86 server vendor. They also tend to be relatively slow in CPU-speed, but make up for this in spades with I/O throughput and memory bandwidth. You see, Sun was one of the first server vendors to have the full 64-bit support necessary for large enterprise databases that banks, telcos and other high-end OLTP outfits require. For the first time you could run an Oracle instance on a single server with up to 106 CPUs and 512GB (that's half a terabyte) of physical memory. Of course there are only limited market segments that need this technology, but during the .com days, everybody thought they needed it and this is how Sun got away with charging ridiculous prices for this type of servers.

Now that the reality of the IT market has been back in effect, Sun has realized it can't keep up with Intel and AMD on the CPU speed front, so Sun has decided to focus on its great operating system and Unix that can scale so well and perform on such a large number of processors, and hopefully sell some nice AMD Opteron servers to run their great, full-featured Unix OS on.

One of the benefits that Sun can offer is true enterprise, 24/7, international on-site and telephone support. If you have an investment bank that's located in 10 countries worldwide, at stock exchanges in London, NY, Singapore, etc., and you want a single 1-800 number to call for a 2-hour onsite response, 2 hour fix time repair on your Oracle database cluster, Sun is a great choice. They are truly on the level of IBM Global Services and only a couple others when it comes to knowledgeable onsite support.

Their newer AMD Opteron server offerings are starting to be much more competitively priced than HP or Dell in the x86 arena. You also have the advantage of natively running either Solaris 10 x86-64 or Linux on the same hardware, with enterprise level onsite support.

Whether Sun can turn themselves around in the market or not is one question, but they provide so many services to government agencies and fortune 500 corporations at the highest levels that their continued survival (in however small a role that might be) in the computer industry is pretty much guaranteed. When their systems are used on a lot of military installations, do you really think the US government would let them go out of business or sell off their assets to a foreign corporation?

Anyway, Sun is a solid choice and reliable server provider, with a true enterprise level support channel. I no longer work there, but I know enough people that do to know you can't really go wrong recommending them.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[ryanov]

Sun has been disappointing, to me, in recent months. Being that I attended a lot of the Solaris 10 brouhaha in NJ, I was pretty excited about the prosepects of what it could do, and I had 4 V20z boxes to try it out on.

Come to find that Sun's own support for Solaris 10 and indeed for Solaris x86 is sad to say the least. Many of their management apps/tools do not support Solaris x86 or Solaris 10 yet. Major issues with, say, disk drives... patches are out for 9, but not for 10 yet. C'mon, folks, get with the program.

Their hardware's been OK, but frankly, that doesn't make up for the rest of the hell that is dealing with them. Don't get me started on their documentation.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[asbjxrn]

Heck, if you don't need more than a 2-way box, you can get better price and performance from an Apple Xserve G5.

But how about a Sun opeteron box?
Sun v20z: 2x Opteron 248, 2GB Ram, 1x73GB disk, $3000: http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process= SunStore&cmdViewProduct_CP&catid=111394
G5 Xserve: 2x G5 2.3Ghz, 1GB Ram, 1x 80GB disk, $4000: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/70902/wo/Oo1dIs4kylfo25YF33W1KKyrgua /0.0.11.1.0.6.15.0.3.1.3.0.3.1.6.1.1.0

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[veldstra]

SUN may not build tanks anymore, but I think they're building the mercedes'. When going for SUN you get a machine that will do an exceptional milage, maybe not with the biggest bang for the buck, but with an extreme reliability. I've seen computers from just about every brand available on this planet, and what amazes me most with SUN is their eye for detail. With rack servers for instance, you always get an extra screw and casenut because they know that sooner or later one of them falls from your hands when installing them... I know it's most of the time a meaningless detail, but I still need to find another manufacturer that thinks of this.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Jim_Maryland]

I'm sure we could all point out cases where one vendor or the other failed more often in our labs. For servers in my labs, I have a mixture of Sun's, SGI's, Dell's, IBM's (PC, not mainframe), and HP's. Out of all of them, I've had to contact Dell the most for failed hard disk, power supplies, and even the motherboard in one. The Sun's, SGI's, and IBM's seem to have the lowest failures (I'll admit though that many of the systems are over 3 years old so maybe the newer equipment fails more frequently but even on the few new ones, I haven't had any problems in my labs).

I'll bet that every system administrator here will have a vendor that has let them down and you'll find other system administrators who will swear by that equipment. Me, I still prefer the Sun boxes for UNIX and I'm sort of neutral on the Win32 vendors.

They fucked up Java

How so? My group does a fair amount of development in a variety of languages (C/C++/Java/VB/C#/and various scripting languages) and by far, the developers prefer Java. I guess I don't see how Sun messed up Java as you indicate.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[segfaultcoredump]

A sample size of 1? that's great.

I'm currently managing 3 SunFire 280R's that were purchased in 2001 (among other systems). Total number of failures during 12+ 24/7/365 operational years: 0. Not even a single hard drive or dimm failure. Given my sample size (3x yours), Sun is more reliable than anything else. Do I think that are the best ever? No way. I have a PII gateway desktop in my basement running as a server. It has been running since '98. Mine has been perfect, yet where I work I've seen dozens fail.

Want to know the most unreliable box I have? A Dell 1650 that randomly reboots at least once a week (its running linux). Dell refuses to do anything about it because "the diagnostics dont show anything". Just what I dont want to hear from the support folks.

In general, sun servers have declined in quality simply because nobody was willing to pay the $100,000 it takes for a totally custom box. The memory in a new sun system? Micron or Kingston. The hard drive? Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate, etc. The cpu? AMD (for the Z line). NIC? broadcom.

What does IBM or HP put into their boxes? Yup, same parts. Do you really think that they will spend R&D resources on designing and testing their own ethernet chips? Not at under $400 for a quad gig pci card they wont.

In general, you get what you pay for when it comes to reliability. A $4,000 sun box will not be more reliable than a $4,000 IBM/HP/Dell/whoever box. A $2,000,000 SunFire 25K will be a lot more reliable than a $4,000 Dell box (is it worth it? depends on your environment).

So how do I choose vendors? Simple, their proven ability to support me when something does go wrong over the full lifetime of the box (5+ years). All vendors have their 'lemons' (Sun 420R anybody? how about Intel's floating point bug that impacted every intel vendor?). It's how they deal with them that makes the lasting impression and determines if it is time to go look for another vendor.

When a vendor fails to fix any problems, thats when I start to walk. So far, I'm staying with sun because their support has not let me down. When they decide to cut corners on support and it impacts my operation.... Well, that is the day I'm going to be an ex-sun customer.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my server room I have 4 servers.

That's great. Thanks for sharing your wealth of experience on the subject.

You often hear this stuff from windows users who probaby wouldn't know RSC from OpenBoot. Could there be a pattern?

I recently worked at a site with approximately 40 racks of equipment. The site suffered a UPS malfunction which resulted in horrible spikes and phase variations being delivered to the data centre. Even IBM zSeries and pSeries systems had to have power supplies replaced, let alone Dells and HPs with with cooked system boards.

Their Suns all came back up without even an fsck. The SF4900 & 6800 didn't even go down.

What does this prove about the relative reliability and build quality of Sun systems?
Nothing.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Axe]

With Java 2 5 1.5 they turned it into a crappy language. Almost all the features they added are badly designed, especially generics.

Quite the opposite, in my opinion. They finally fixed all the stupid stuff.

If you say that type-unsafe containers, no enums and no normal library for various threading feature was somehow a better state of affairs, then you do not know what you are talking about.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[rpdillon]

Generics are key - they move what would be a lot of runtime errors to compile time. As any developer knows, its a whole lot easier to debug compile time errors.

J2SE 5 actually is quite a good platform - they have improved performance, and almost all the sytactic sugar features they implemented are "free" from a performance perspective, while streamlining the code.

The only exeception I know of is the enum's .values() call, which can be expensive if you put it inside your loop.

I guess we just disagree.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Builder]

Here's some anecdotal evidence for you...

The bank I work for started their Linux initiative, so we bought in boxes from Dell, HP and Sun to trial Linux on. 2 Dell 2850's, 3 HP DL-380's and 3 Sun Fire V65x's.

Firstly, the sun's don't ship with hardware RAID by default. As soon as you add this, they start to look more expensive than all of the competition.

Within the first 6 months I had one critical hardware failure PER MACHINE! And even though these machines were under maintenance, Sun considers a motherboard in a V65x to be a user servicable component. So when the board blew, I had to swap out the memory, the disks and the CPUs into another box. This is NOT what I pay maintenance for!

We had no problems at all with the HPs or the Dells.

On the enterprise hardware front, I've had two major failures in the last 2 days. For one of them, sun advise that I leave a terminal connected in the data centre and run down and see what messages are on the screen when it crashes. This is what you pay sun for!

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

Total number of failures during 12+ 24/7/365 operational years: 0. Not even a single hard drive or dimm failure.

I've got a Mr. Murphy on the line for you. I think he's some kind of Policeman.

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[andyr0ck]

being a sys admin in a place where Solaris/SPARC is the platform, i've seen the quality of the machines go down in the last year or so. with the advent of Linux becoming a viable platform, Sun have felt the pinch of cheap x86 boxes and have responded with their own commodity boxes. you can see some of them (sunfire v240 for e.g.) have ALI chipsets in them, etc and other stuff you'd expect to see in x86 kit. i can't say we've had many, if any, components fail in them but we haven't had them longer than approx 18 months so maybe we'll hit the curve soon :-)

for real Sun engineering, you need to look to the older models, like the sunfire 280R. we run those too and you can see the difference when you open them up. and in the performance.

my point being; if you look at any of Sun's webcasts, you'll see Jon Schwartz go on about 'the era of commodity computing'. cheaper boxes is Sun's response to that trend. dunno 'bout this laptop, though!

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[xdroop]

Here's some counter-annecdotal evidence.

We purchased 40 V60x servers (the 1U equivilent to your V65x) 18 months ago; we also have one V65x, which is statistically uninteresting. We also don't care about RAID.

Of the 40 V60x servers, I've had one failed mainboard and one ethernet jack that doesn't hold onto its ethernet wire properly. That's it. Oh, and Sun sent a guy to fix the mainboard for me. Regular warrantee, no extra service.

Of course, since I'm Canadian, I might be more special than you Americans.

What really annoyed me is that we bought into these computers, and then Sun goes and EOLs them for the Opterons, which are not immediately suitable for what we are doing with them. We are looking at the Opterons, but these V20z systems are rebadged computers, not Genuine Sun Things. (For the record, yes the V60x computers are also rebadged computers, but they work pretty well.)

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[vegetasaiyajin]

Generics are key - they move what would be a lot of runtime errors to compile time. As any developer knows, its a whole lot easier to debug compile time errors.

I'm not saying the concept of generics is wrong. I am saying the java implementation of generics is broken. This implementation introduces a lot of subtle runtime errors because they are not typesafe, as many believe.
These generics only save you from a a few casts.
The only runtime errors that will be moved to compile time errors are very stupid errors not common to most programmers (even not so good ones). Anyone who creates a List for storing Strings usually doesn't wriite code for adding ints to it. The use of collections is usually wrapped in more application specific classes.

J2SE 5 actually is quite a good platform - they have improved performance,

They improved the virtual machine, but they damaged the language. The best option is to compile with -source 1.4

Re:Partnering with Sun?

[mlrtime]

OT

Good analogy, Mercedes went from being #1 in terms of reliability in 1990 to the bottom of list in 2000. In a ten year stretch the company went from releasing cars when the engineer said they are ready to releasing on a deadline and sacrificing reliability.

Add to this the fact they are trying to push more electronic gadgets in their cars, this adds to the common breakdowns in their top model cars. .02

$3,400

[thzinc]

Geez, if they really want to coax developers, they should target the sub-$2,000 developers, though, I'm no marketing genius...

Re:$3,400

[AKAImBatman]

You think $3,400 is bad? You obviously haven't shopped for a Sparc laptop from Tadpole!

Re:$3,400

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not even a Sparc its an AMD running x86 Solaris 10...

That's not correct. The $3,400 laptop is Sparc. The $895 workstation is AMD. From TFA:

"The Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation will list at $3,400 and is equipped with Sun's Ultrasparc processor, the Solaris 10 operating system, 512 megabytes of memory, a 40 gigabyte hard drive and WiFi connectivity."

Re:$3,400

[enigmatichmachine]

and it weigh's over 20 LBS and has no battery, I would call a tadpole a "laptop form factor computer", kinda like how kraft has to call that stuff it makes "processed cheese food"

Sun laptop? Isn't that an oxymoron?

[caryw]

Sun has never been super keen on the design aspect of the computer world, not that I agree there should even be a design aspect in mind when it comes to computers. I hope they don't expect to put an E450 in a backpack and call it a laptop.

Any guesses as to how much this behemoth is going to weigh?
--
Fairfax Underground: Fairfax County, VA forums and chat

Not as heavy

[The_Rippa]

It doesn't seem big enough (dimension-wise) to fulfill it's purpose.

I mean, in two years will it be able to hold down as much paper from blowing away as a full-size SparcStation does?

Re:Not as heavy

[kv9]

yes indeedly-doo, very *to* bad.

Not the first SPARC laptop though

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a company called Tadpole that made SPARC laptops before. Dunno if they're still around.

Re:Not the first SPARC laptop though

[Agent Green]

Tadpole is still around. Lots of goodies here:

http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/html/products/mobil e/

No prices listed, but they have SPARC laptops!

Re:Not the first SPARC laptop though

[keesh]

The SPARC laptops start at around five thousand dollars. Oh, and they won't boot Linux, and Tadpole have repeatedly refused to provide access to hardware or documentation despite customer demand and offers from various high profile kernel hackers to do a port.

Re:Not the first SPARC laptop though

[myowntrueself]

"There was a company called Tadpole that made SPARC laptops before."

And then theres the SPARCstation Voyager, actually made by Sun. If you can call it a 'laptop'. It can be battery powered and has an LCD screen.

Might be a bit incomfortable on the lap though...

Re:Not the first SPARC laptop though

[OverCode@work]

I bothered to track down the prices a while back, and they were INSANE. $20k was around their low end, if I recall.

Re:Not the first SPARC laptop though

[suitepotato]

Might this have anything to do with Sun resisting Linux and trying to save Solaris the usual way many companies do, by not inovating and by "encouraging" partners to resist other platforms by way of strong-arm tactics? I seem to recall SGI being similarly oblivious to their workstation space being slowly eatent by WindowsNT years back, instead doing everything they could to jawbone customers into staying with them rather than giving them exactly what they wanted at the price point they wanted.

Oh well. Wait a few years and you'll have 64-bit processors in your iPod multibooting six kinds of Linux and two of Windows and maybe even OSXXX. Forget a laptop. I want a PDA that does what a workstation can. Given rates of advancements, I won't be waiting long.

we have been using sun laptops

[hsmith]

at work for a project, they have been out for a long time AFAIK

plus they run about $17,000 they aren't cheap. i don't know where this article is coming from at all.

Re:we have been using sun laptops

[Guy Harris]

i don't know where this article is coming from at all.

It's coming from Sun announcing the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation, although the picture on that page suggests that perhaps Sun are just re-branding Tadpole and Naturetech SPARC laptops. (The announcement mainly talks about a new x86 workstation, but it also mentions the SPARC laptops.)

The article didn't say "first SPARC laptop", it said "Sun announces its first laptop", i.e. the first one that Sun is selling as a Sun, rather than somebody else selling it as a SPARC-compatible.

The Sun announcement clearly says "Entry-level pricing for the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation begins at $3,400 (USD)." Perhaps, as they've "been out for a long time", your workplace bought SPARC workstations when they were a lot more expensive.

Hello, welcome to yesterday

[BrK]

I had a Sun laptop in something like '97. And it wasn't brand new even then.

Re:Hello, welcome to yesterday

[gpw213]

I had a Sun laptop in something like '97. And it wasn't brand new even then.

There have been Sparc laptops for a long time. They were never build by Sun, though. And they were also hideously expensive, i.e. in the $20,000 range. This is Sun's first foray into this highly dubious market segment.

Re:Hello, welcome to yesterday

[Anonymous Coward]

you likely either had a tadpole or a rdi laptop, not a sun laptop. The sparcbooks were tadpole, and rdi had powerlite laptops. Both were sparc based and ran sunos4 or sunos5.

I believe the closest thing sun came to a laptop before now was the voyager luggable.

Re:Hello, welcome to yesterday

[HardCase]

These days, all of the chip-design tools also run on Linux (and in fact, Linux is used more than Sparc/Solaris these days), and it would be far more economical to do demos on a Linux laptop.

I've got a Dell PowerEdge 360 that runs rings around the Sun Blade 1000 next to it, except for one problem - the PCB simulation software that is written for both Solaris and Linux has a glaring bug in the Linux version that causes it to crash after displaying just a few waveforms of transmission line simulations, making it pretty much useless. And the bug has been there since the Linux version was introduced (in the last major release). The vendor's response? Yeah, they know about it, but they don't have the assets to fix it. Windows is their bread and butter, followed by Solaris, followed by Linux, which gets a passing glance.

And, unfortunately, they are the de facto standard in my business, so I end up doing most of my work on the Sun machine.

I do have to say, though, that after three years, the Blade has been rebooted twice (both times because my big feet got tangled up in the power cord) and the Dell has been rebooted a bunch of times after replacing a couple of defective hard drives and a bad memory module. I expect that the Blade will be going strong long after that Dell has hit the scrapheap. But, doggone it, Linux sure runs some stuff a hell of a lot faster than Solaris on that Sun.

-h-

oh man ..

[torpor]

.. i have, literally, as a computer geek, been praying (not religious) that Sun was going to be doing this.

well, not actually, just this. that Sun would do it. and then SGI would do it.

i tell you, it'd make up for the bizaare experience that can only be described as the last 5 years of 'Apple make the only Unix laptop worth a damn' reality bubble distortion field ..

please, SGI, make us a laptop, put your Linux on it, and make it rock like it should.

*sniff..

Way too much unfair bad publicity

[johansalk]

Sun suffers more than anything from a disproportionate and hugely unjust share of bad publicity that is thrown at it. It just had become too fashionable to bash Sun. Whatever Sun does or come up with, you can be certain there'll be a crowd of idiots who'll badmouth it and can't wait to sing its obituary. I don't want to hear nonsense in replies as to why this is so - I don't want to hear anyone tell me any such nonsense; I know this company and I have followed it for years, and fuck you and your thoughtless kneejerk impending-doom reponses to anything Sun does. I know that it innovates and contributes a lot to the industry and to open source, yet all eyes are scornfully on and all tongues are poisonously about it, all the while other giants while in their mediocrity under the radars of the crowds of fucktard wannabe pundits.

Re:Way too much unfair bad publicity

[NickFortune]

Gosh, with silver tounged ambassadors like yourself ready to launch a charm offensive on their behalf, how can they possibly lose?

The problem is ...

[93 Escort Wagon]

"Enterprise computer maker Sun Microsystems announced its first-ever laptop yesterday..."

I heard it was just a Sun Blade 2500, but it now comes with this really big backpack.

Specifications

[Noksagt]

One of:
UltraSPARC IIi (550 MHz or 650 MHz)
UltraSPARC IIIi (1.28 GHz)

Up to:
2 GB SDRAM

Either
80-GB IDE HD
73-GB UltraSCSI HD

802.11
Solaris 10
JDE

Now replace all references to Sun in the parent

[melted]

Now replace all references to Sun in the parent with references to Microsoft and remove open source and you'll get a good description of Slashdot.

Processor?

[nurb432]

Didnt mention the processor used. Perhaps a ultraSPARC?

That would give some of us soon to be ex apple fans somewhere to go, other then just a ix86.

We're Cutting Prices On All Items...

[MightyMartian]

That's right! Sun's cutting prices up to 40%! Mad Dog McNealy is running throughout the store, lifting his leg to great deals! Look at this great workstation! Was 5 trillion dollars, now only 443 billion dollars! With prices like these, this sale won't last long! Get down here while there are stil LOW LOW prices!

Mad Dog McNealy says "Linux is Red Hat, Red Hat is evil, but Microsoft is A-okay!"

This sale is brought to you by Sun Computers, maker of Java, slower than Espresso, and guaranteed to run badly on any platform!

Re:We're Cutting Prices On All Items...

[memfrob]

This sale is brought to you by Sun Computers

Pardon the interruption, but the marketers making the previous offer have been sacked.

"More LOW LOW prices, now from SunSOFT...

We apologize, but the people responsible for sacking the previous marketers, have been sacked.

"..and you can ONLY get this deal from the brand-new Sun... er... Microsystems!

Once again we apologize for the interruption. The people responsible for sacking the people who were sacking the marketing droids, have been sacked.

We now continue with some less offensive Slashdot commentary...

You mean, something like this?

[DAldredge]

By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Monday 27th June 2005 14:42 GMT

Sun Microsystems has polished off its cheapest and likely most attractive Opteron-based workstation to date.

The hardware maker today introduced the world to the Ultra 20 a one-way (one socket) box that starts at $895. That price has to please a lot of Sun customers who complained when the much higher-end W2100z amd W1100z workstations arrived, costing thousands of dollars. With the Ultra 20, Sun is really delivering some of the price/performance benefits associated with x86 chips to the developer crowd.

Sun has long been a major player in the workstation market, pumping out Solaris on SPARC boxes for engineers, developers and designers. The rise, however, of Intel Xeon's processor ate into a huge chunk of Sun's workstation share. Sun's line of Opteron-based systems is its response to this loss, and the Ultra 20 is the first box in this line aimed square at developers.

Sun unveiled the system at its Java One conference which starts today in San Francisco.

"This system is meant to reach a much broader audience," said John Fowler, Sun's vice president in charge of the x86 systems. "Java One is the world's biggest developer conference, so it made sense to show it off there."

While you can buy the Ultra 20 flat out just like any another bit of hardware, Sun also has a much weirder pricing option. Customers can pay $30 per month over three years ($1,080) and get the system, Solaris 10, Java Studio Enterprise 7, Java Studio Creator and support. This package full of Java tools is meant for the developer crowd.

Initially, the Ultra 20 will ship with a single-core version - 1.8GHz to 2.6GHz - of AMD's Opteron. As El Reg reported last week, AMD will make a dual-core version of this 100 Series chip available in the third quarter. (AMD confirmed the move to customers in a note issued Friday.)

The Ultra 20 also ships with up to 4GB of memory, up to 2 SATA drives (80GB or 250GB), six USB 2.0 ports and two IEEE 1394a ports. The box will run Solaris x86, Red Hat and SuSE Linux 32-bit and 64-bit and Windows XP Pro 32-bit and 64-bit.

Sun continues to see a sharp rise in it Opteron system sales. The company is currently battling with HP for the top spot among all Opteron server sellers.

Sun has enjoyed particular success in Germany where it holds 41 per cent of the Opteron server market versus 23 per cent for HP, according to the first quarter figures from Gartner.

You can see the Ultra 20 in all its glory available here.

Along with the Ultra 20, Sun also pointed to the new Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation, which runs on its UltraSPARC chip and starts at $3,400. This system looks like a rebranded version of a Tadpole laptop. ®

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra20/rev iews.jsp
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/27/sun_ultra2 0_opteron/

What about Voyager? not a laptop exactly, but...

[toby]

Sun's SPARCstation Voyager (1994) may not have been a laptop exactly, but "transportable" and at 12lb dubbed a "nomadic" solution... Maybe something like the 15.8lb Mac Portable (1989), a.k.a. the "Luggable".

Don't forget the New Ultra 20

[DAldredge]

By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Monday 27th June 2005 14:42 GMT

Sun Microsystems has polished off its cheapest and likely most attractive Opteron-based workstation to date.

The hardware maker today introduced the world to the Ultra 20 a one-way (one socket) box that starts at $895. That price has to please a lot of Sun customers who complained when the much higher-end W2100z amd W1100z workstations arrived, costing thousands of dollars. With the Ultra 20, Sun is really delivering some of the price/performance benefits associated with x86 chips to the developer crowd.

Sun has long been a major player in the workstation market, pumping out Solaris on SPARC boxes for engineers, developers and designers. The rise, however, of Intel Xeon's processor ate into a huge chunk of Sun's workstation share. Sun's line of Opteron-based systems is its response to this loss, and the Ultra 20 is the first box in this line aimed square at developers.

Sun unveiled the system at its Java One conference which starts today in San Francisco.

"This system is meant to reach a much broader audience," said John Fowler, Sun's vice president in charge of the x86 systems. "Java One is the world's biggest developer conference, so it made sense to show it off there."

While you can buy the Ultra 20 flat out just like any another bit of hardware, Sun also has a much weirder pricing option. Customers can pay $30 per month over three years ($1,080) and get the system, Solaris 10, Java Studio Enterprise 7, Java Studio Creator and support. This package full of Java tools is meant for the developer crowd.

Initially, the Ultra 20 will ship with a single-core version - 1.8GHz to 2.6GHz - of AMD's Opteron. As El Reg reported last week, AMD will make a dual-core version of this 100 Series chip available in the third quarter. (AMD confirmed the move to customers in a note issued Friday.)

The Ultra 20 also ships with up to 4GB of memory, up to 2 SATA drives (80GB or 250GB), six USB 2.0 ports and two IEEE 1394a ports. The box will run Solaris x86, Red Hat and SuSE Linux 32-bit and 64-bit and Windows XP Pro 32-bit and 64-bit.

Sun continues to see a sharp rise in it Opteron system sales. The company is currently battling with HP for the top spot among all Opteron server sellers.

Sun has enjoyed particular success in Germany where it holds 41 per cent of the Opteron server market versus 23 per cent for HP, according to the first quarter figures from Gartner.

You can see the Ultra 20 in all its glory available here.

Along with the Ultra 20, Sun also pointed to the new Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation, which runs on its UltraSPARC chip and starts at $3,400. This system looks like a rebranded version of a Tadpole laptop. ®

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra20/rev iews.jsp
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/27/sun_ultra2 0_opteron/

Link to the actual product site

[neosake]

here's a link to the actual product page http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra3/inde x.xml

These are just rebranded Tadpole and Naturetech!

[mrbill]

Sun is just reselling the Tadpole and Naturetech portables. I've got one of the Naturetech systems right now (for review on sunhelp.org) and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/sets/48<nobr>9<wbr></wbr></nobr> 821/">some pictures up</a>. It's *very* nice, but *very* pricey.

Re:These are just rebranded Tadpole and Naturetech

[mrbill]

Er, make that: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/sets/489821/

Poor track record

[DogDude]

Just keep in mind that Sun has a very consistent track record of trying out the low end market, only to decide that they'd be better off sticking with the high end, after all. You may end up stuck with no support in just a few months. Really, Sun should just keep doing what they're good at, instead of continually trying to break into the hyper-competitive (read: profitless) consumer market. The just got finished discontinuing their brand new Java Desktop (today), and they've tried PC's numerous times. Of course, they could've used their Java Desktop on their new laptop, but that would require more than one weeks' foresight, which is obviously more than the management can handle.

Re:Poor track record

[illumin8]

Just keep in mind that Sun has a very consistent track record of trying out the low end market, only to decide that they'd be better off sticking with the high end, after all. You may end up stuck with no support in just a few months.

I call bullshit. Name me one Sun hardware product that they have dropped support for before the support lifecycle was over? There isn't one. Sun's hardware support is second to none. They guarantee that a box you buy now will continue to be supported up until 5 years after the product is EOLd (end of life). This means that in 2007, when they stop selling whatever Opteron server you're buying from them today (like the V40z or whatever), you'll still get full hardware support until 2012 !!! Name me one beige box vendor that guarantees that. In fact, name me one x86 hardware vendor that does that. I don't think there are any.

Except these aren't built by Sun, either

[daveschroeder]

They're just reselling the Sparc laptops that have been around for *ages*:

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra3/

Re:Sun's Lsat Chance

[DogDude]

Their designs are ugly and clunky on a desktop computer

It's called retro or "old school". Personally, I like the way they look: the exact opposite of the ultra-slick yuppie Apples. Sun boxes *look* like they mean business, even if some of them are purple.

Yow! News Flash! Stop the Presses!

[Un pobre guey]

Mountain View, CA - June 29, 2005 - Sun Microsystems announced today a radically new information storage and communications system using nanotechnology. Using tiny carbon-based fibers carefully prepared, purified and pressed into paper thin sheets, along with sleek, ergonomic pigment deposition units, Sun has introduced a tablet-based handwriting-centric system they believe will inundate the world.

Availlable in units of 75 sheets each, the beautiful yellow nanotech material is easy to hold in the user's hand or attached to a conventional clipboard. It requires no external power, relying exclusively on passive power derived from the user's physical manipulation of the material. The stylus is available in models that apply black, red, blue, or green pigment to the nanotech sheets. They also rely entirely on the user's physical manipulation for power, and only require periodic changing of toner cartridges that are small tubular components only a few millimeters in diameter. Sun has thus eliminated the cost and logistics required to distribute electrical power, UPS facilities, and expensive rechargeable batteries to users. Data storage is for all intents and purposes permanent, and is impervious to even multi-Tesla magnetic fields and large amounts of electromagnetic radiation across a wide spectrum. Styli that contain precisely machined lengths of purified graphite-based toner will soon be available and will add erasable read/write capability.

The nanosheets will be available in units of 10 pads of 75 sheets each for $2500 list price, and non-erasable styli are available in packages of 25 for $1295. The advanced machined graphite styli were not available at press time.

Well technically...

[bluGill]

Back before the sparc, and after the 68020 sun3, Sun had some i386 machines that you could call wintel. (though nobody used Windows then, and I'm not sure if Dos would run). They also made the sun3x in those days, both of which didn't sell many. (In part because the sparc soon came out, and in those days the sparc killed the 80386.

Re:Well technically...

[GreatDrok]

I had one of those Sun boxes. It was called the SUN 386i and it had a 386DX at 20Mhz with 8MB of RAM. It ran SUNOS 4.0.x and was actually pretty quick and able to run X11R4 nicely albeit with only an 8bit framebuffer. There were prototypes of a 486i but that was killed before many were made. The architecture was very different from a PC; the only real similarity was that it used an Intel processor but there was no way to boot DOS. Upgrade options were limited so I replaced it with a SPARC1 although I kept the 19" Trinitron monitor and Type 4 keyboard and optical mouse I had with the 386.

Think of these things as the precursor to the Macintosh with Intel processor due next year. The CPU may have been Intel but the box was SUN all the way through.

and Steve Ballmer will be their new spokesman

[screwthemoderators]

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/index.php?e=ballmerwi ndows.wmv Except in Nebraska!

Re:Sun Still sells computers?

[rpozz]

Why buy sun hardware these days when better unix-based OSs and better price-performance are available everywhere else?

Sun x86 stuff has a pretty good price/performance ratio, and Solaris is a decent OS, especially compared to Linux with the flaky 2.6.x kernel (why the fuck isn't there a 2.7.x for unstable stuff?), poor backwards-compatibility and compatiblity between distros. What are you comparing it to exactly?

Damn that thing is sexy

[Ahkorishaan]

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I think that Ultra 20 Workstation is one sleek and sexy looking machine. Even the 24inch Sun branded LCD they show it with looks nice. If I could get a general purpose GPU, and a dual core processor in the thing I'd consider it. It'd sure beat the pants off a Dell, HP, or Gateway workstation...

Re:better idea

[pedantic bore]

Why didn't Linus just add support for common x86 laptop chipsets to Linux...oh, wait, he let us do it for him. for free.

Why didn't *BSD just add support for common x86 laptop chipsets to Linux...oh, wait, they let us do it for them. for free.

etc.

Oh, grow up! Sun opens solaris, and all you can do is gripe that they expect someone else to flesh out the hardware support. If everyone had your attitude, Linus would probably be just another anonymous code monkey and Linux wouldn't even be a historical footnote.

Re:Sun's Lsat Chance

[Decaff]

I wouldn't be suprised to see a slashdot story announcing Sun going out of business within a few months.

Me neither. They have been turning up regularly for years.

Todayear.

[itomato]

I can't find any evidence of this being a Sun branded computer.

The info page shows a Tadpole and a Naturetech notebook.

So these still seem to be SPARC notebooks.

Tadpole makes a Dual CPU SPARC notebook, BTW

Um, wait they are Tadpoles.

[libra-dragon]

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra3/inde x.xml

and Naturetechs... Sun is just reselling the two laptops. Not even a rebadging --weak.

About That IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM gets more server revenue than any other vendor in the world and has been gaining marketshare. (So say IDC and Gartner.) Their product line has greater span than anyone, small to large. For example, where else can you buy a zSeries that supports thousands of Linux guests on a single server? And it's the only server vendor that actually does R&D any more -- including server R&D. (See: Cell processor, POWER, millipede storage, UNIX/Linux LPARs, etc., etc.) You don't build multi-billion dollar fab plants (for example) unless you're a serious player. There's absolutely no other server vendor doing that.

Spinning off the Wintel appliance business -- for a handsome payment -- was brilliant. IBM got rid of that Microsoft Windows OEM preload nonsense that undermined their ability to offer their customers choice. IBM is Linux's biggest corporate benefactor -- and an astonishingly, refreshingly benevolent one. That deserves at least a careful consideration of their products in my book.

First? WRONG

[olympus_coder]

Sun sold laptops in the late 90s at least. I know. I had one. Couldn't tell you the model or name, but it was a sun and ran Solaris.

Not sure what crack the people who wrote this were smoking, but good for them.

Re:I'm salivating over their Ultra 20 workstation

[anagama]

I totally agree. Looks nice and has a 3yr warranty - what comes with a warranty that long (without paying extra)? And this looks like an interesting 90 day trial offer:

If you do not wish to keep the system, you must notify Sun in writing (by email to ultra20_try_buy@sun.com) with your order confirmation number within 90 days of the product shipment date. If Sun does not receive your email cancellation within such 90-day period, you will be charged the price listed for the product at the time of your order. In the event of cancellation, Sun will be responsible for picking up the equipment from you.

Re:Keyboards

[dysk]

My RDI Powerlite sparc 110Mhz laptop has the full sun-specific keyboard. I love having the extra keys.

From looking at the product photos on Sun's website, it appears that the 15" model has a standard laptop keyboard and the 17" model has a customized keyboard.

playing catch-up with SGI

[SethJohnson]

If you look closely at the garbage movie, Twister, there are a couple scenes where the meteorologists are out in the field with their stupid school bus looking at satellite data on a laptop. I'm guessing because they got a deal on CGI work, Silicon Graphics wanted every computer in the movie to be one of theirs. So on this laptop, they had a piece of masking tape on the bottom of the screen with the letters handwritten- 'SGI'.

More ridiculous than that, though, was when the hailstorm came. This ragtag group of meteorologists, working on a shoestring budget, grabbed their stuff and ran for cover. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character uses the 'SGI laptop' as a shield from the hail holding it over his head as he ran towards the school bus.

RDI is another company that (used to?) make them

[Chuck Chunder]

I have a Powerlite sitting on the floor at home doing nothing. It's a heavy bugger!

Why only 40 gigs?

[windowpain]

This uberlaptop comes with a puny 40 gig drive. I know if you're not filling your machine with movies, pr0n and tunes a gig goes a long way. But still, it seems ridiculous to saddle it with such a small HD. At newegg a Samsung OEM 40GB 2.5" drive sells for $69 while a 60GB costs $13 more. I guess every buck counts.

Re:Probably an Acer Ferrari

[LarryWake]

Tons of laptops might work with Solaris (though, I'll admit, Solaris is quite limited)... but no one will ever know...

...unless you cheat and look at the Solaris Hardware Compatibility List, which currently lists 175 different laptop models.

Re:Get yours now!

[mlk]

Every other laptop out there is x86 or Apple.

Tadpole SparcLE has been out an age.

These whacky kids today...

[merlyn]

... who are too young to remember the Sparcbook.

First ever!!!?? Sheesh.

Re:These whacky kids today...

[rimmon]

Well, it's not the first laptop with a sparc processor or the first to be running Solaris. But it sure is the first FROM SUN. And that's waht the article said.
The Sparcbook was made by Tadpole. BTW, these guys are still alive and kicking, check out the Bullfrog, old man! :)

Sun aren't making laptops ...

[DrHyde]

... they're just reselling the Sparc laptops that Tadpole and Naturetech have already been making for ages. As you can see by the image in the top left of this page.

"Failure is normal" I love you man.

[crovira]

Its so refreshing to find somebody who puts it that way...

I work on the software side and I wish that the people who design software worked with the same thought.

Anything complicated rarely works. (Rovira's law of systemantics: The availablity of a resouce [A] is inversely proportional to [=1/] its complexity [C] to the power of [^] the urgency with which it is required [U] therefore [A=1/C^U])

Sometimes things are so complicated that total non-function is undetectable.

Niagara

[bblfish]

These laptops look interesting. But perhaps they are just the first moves in what may be a Niagara laptop? Now that would certainly have my interest!

Sun proves once again that they're CLUELESS!!

[WidescreenFreak]

"Hello! We're Sun Microsystems! You see that logo? It instills awe in you, doesn't it? You are getting sleepy! Keep staring at the Sun logo. You are getting sleepy. Focus on the logo. Now repeat after me - 'I will pay far more than someone with common sense would pay because of the Sun logo.' Say it. Good. Now, keep repeating it. That's right. Just keep repeating it. Excellent!"

STARTING at $3,400 for a Sun-branded laptop running at 1.28 GHz.

Compare that to less than $2,000 for a brand name laptop (pick one) w/ Pentium M 1.8-2.0 GHz, DVD writer, 1 GB RAM, and so forth - and it's very likely that Linux will run just fine on it, perhaps with some drivers.

Oh, look! I can get a screaming fast 3 GHz Pentium IV system w/ 1 GB RAM, 500 GB drive space, 19" LCD panel, dual-layer DVD writer, Gb Ethernet, etc. starting at ~$1,900 from brand name A. Again, it's very likely that Linux + some drivers will work with this system.

Compare that to a Sun Blade 150 at 650 MHz, 512 MB of RAM, 80 GB drive, 100 Mb Ethernet, etc that STARTS at a measly $3,400!

I really wish that Sun would realize that the Sun brand name is no longer sufficient to jack up the prices on their hardware. I honestly don't see this laptop selling any more than it normally would if Sun didn't bring it to the forefront, since us Sun geeks knew about Tadpole for years now.

Before you think I'm trolling, I'm actually a Sun bigot. I have three Sun workstations at home (yes, home) and I've already contacted my Sun sales rep regarding purchasing the new Ultra 20, (which is actually VERY reasonably priced, particularly for Sun) as a personal workstation for me at home (yes, home). But the simple fact of the matter is that for years I have watched major, international, engineering corporations trade in their Sun workstations for Dell workstations simply because of the price per performance. Sun's continually high prices due to the Sun name has been a pet peeve of mine for over six years.

When a Sun workstation offers 1/2 to 2/3 the speed at twice the price, the purchasing decision is a no-brainer. This laptop sadly continues that trend. The dot-com bubble is dead. Most companies take a much harder look at the bottom line than before. I don't see how this laptop will sell any more than before, particularly since us Sun geeks have known about Tadpole laptops for many years.