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Sun introduces the "Sun Ray"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the return-of-java-station dept.

Doofuswrote to us about Sun's release of their newest effort to knock the PC off the corporate desktop. The Sun Ray is essentially "a juiced-up monitor", and is a thin-client solution. Cost is 10$ per month for 5 years, or 30$ per month for a more powerful client. Not much technical details in the article, but we'll update with more links as these appear.Update: 09/08 01:15 by H :Thanks to Paul Tomblin for a huge PDF file with the tech specs.

3 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. What kind of servers do you need to support these? by volsung · · Score: 5
    Sun Chief Executive ``Scott McNealy is smarter than a fox and can make all of this sound wonderful, but in fact very few corporations are going to buy this stuff,'' said David Wu, a San Francisco-based analyst for brokerage firm ABN AMRO Securities. ``Sun is a server company, period. If they want to give away software and make some cheap computers, so be it. But that doesn't change their (main) business.''
    That guy hit it on the nose. Notice how all of Sun's recent announcements are server-centric? StarPortal needs a server to run, and these "Souped-up monitors" need a server to run as well. Guess what kind of server?

    I'm actually curious to see what the resource requirements are to support a bunch of these things deployed in a company. One box per 5 clients? 25 clients? 50 clients? Is the server end a web server, or is it custom software for Solaris, etc...

    It will be interesting to see how Sun balances forcing people to buy servers (which they want to do) with integrating this technology with a business's existing servers.

  2. Silly students, wait 'til you start working by hatless · · Score: 4

    Cheap PCs are cheap up front. The thing is, the hardware cost is nothing compared to the cost of maintaining the things. Sure, a well-managed *nix workstation is easier to manage than an NT box under SMS or Tivoli, which is easier to manage than a Mac, which is easier to manage than a Win95/98 PC.

    But all of these things, with their varying hardware, their local filesystems, and in too many cases their local apps and OS, are a total money pit compared to running thin clients, whether they're pure terminals, or something with local CPU but no local disk-based apps and data, like this.

    Past NC attempts have been underpowered, and viable apps outside vertical markets have been few. But at some point, large businesses will be more than ready for the right thin-client machines.

    Besides, our own /. testosterone-fueled lust for playing with computer guts isn't shared by most people, nor will it ever be. Nor should it. Most people want nothing more than a foolproof, zero-maintenance way to run a range of general-interest apps. Sooner or later, the PC as we know it is going to become something only developers and hackers will want. Everyone else will be perfectly happy to plug away on a ROM-based box with high-speed net connectivity.

    Will Sun Ray succeed? Ehh. The odds are certainly against it. Will something like it succeed in the next couple of years? Yup.

  3. More Info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4
    I thought these terminals was old news, since 100 of them has just been installed in one of the "databar's" here on the Technical University of Denmark.

    They are _extremely_ dumb, not even X terminals. Instead you have a terminalserver, that runs one X server for each SunRay terminal. Then the bitmapped graphics is transfered over the network, in some compressed format, all the terminal does is send the keyboard and mouse events the other way, and put the graphics in the framebuffer. Exactly like VNC and Citrix, not something that sounds very intelligent.

    I have only used them briefly, but they actually seem very fast. Ofcourse I don't know how they stack up under heavy load. Don't expect fullscreen MPEG on them though

    Tech details: 1280x1024 @ 76 Hz

    24-bit colors

    10/100 Mbit Ethernet connection

    Composite video input

    Stereo audio out/Mono microphone in

    4 USB port

    ISSO approved smart card reader

    The setup is 100 terminals, with 50 each on a Sun250 Terminalserver (Dual USparcII, 2G ram)

    These only do the graphics, 50 X servers on each there is a HPC6500 for the CPU power with a couple of E10K to come.

    I don't know if the page describing the new setup is available from the outside but try:

    Databar update

    Morten Olsen (not AC)