Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the what's-the-story-morning-glory dept.
terrified gave us the hook-up to a recent ZD-Net column about Sun's recent moves in relation to Linux. The author's contention is that Sun is using Linux as a pawn in their holy war against Microsoft. A ell-argued piece.
I find it absolutely amazing that so few otherwise intelligent people completely fail to get the point of thin-client computing.
READ MY LIPS: THIS IS NOT FOR YOUR HOME PC!!!!
I am consulting at a company right now that has over 1000 UNIX boxes on people's desk. They also have about that many NT boxes. And they have a dozen people to keep them running probably making an average of $50K/yr.
What do I (and most of the other people with this equipment) use it for?
Netscape. Rlogin to a server where we do our development. Maybe Applix or StarOffice. And we don't have root access or access to anything but our NFS mounted home directories. Why not? We don't need it.
I don't need a full, independent workstation to do what I do here. I certainly don't need a $3000 Ultra 5. Thin clients are wonderful in this kind of environment.
The last place I worked (a large health-care organization) had literally hundreds, possibly thousands of users who used their PC's for two things: netscape to access the intranet (no Internet access for the masses) and Rumba to emulate an IBM 3270 terminal. We started to use Winterms because of the maintenance situation and they worked pretty well -- it looks to me like the Sun ray is an order of magnitude better than a winterm as well as being cheaper.
I see people whining about games on thin clients... HELLO!??!! How on earth is that relevant in the environment that these things are actually aimed at? It's not.
Finally, let me come back to the home PC. My wife uses a PC for three things: email, netscape, and quicken. That's it! No games, no office, no nothing. Why does she need a full PC running Linux or anything else?
The biggest problem with thin clients to date has been that they have not been cheaper, just easier to maintain. The Sun Ray looks to be changing that, and I wish them luck.
As for Star-Portal: Star Portal seems like a wonderful idea to me for occasional users of office applications (like me) -- Emacs is all the WP I need most of the time. When it's not, pull up one of the corporate licenses for star-portal. Don't forget that you don't have to install the software on every desktop as you do with conventional office apps like Star Office or MS-Office.
I guess the bottom line to this post is this: if you can only think of the home market and are reading slashdot, you don't need thin clients. But realize that most of the computers in the world are not aimed at the home market!!!
The article raises a lot of very good questions. Personally, I can see Sun going too far with badmouthing Linux because, in the long run, it will hurt Sun to be seen as the bad guy. Support for Linux serves Sun for the present and that's good for Linux now. Let's see what the future holds.
As for their plans to move applications to the net... That could never again be the main mode of operations in the computing world. That's exactly what we had before the Altair, Apple, IBM-PC... came along and confirmed the market for desktop computing. There are certain situations for which hosted software is a very good idea. Computers in public librarys and such come to mind. I don't want to go to the library to use a public terminal that some cyberpunk has rendered unuseable by filling the HD with their favorite games. I want to go to the library to use the research tools that were intended to be there.
Ultimately, Sun can go ahead with their plans to serve apps across the net. There is a relatively untapped market for that service. However, as I paraphrase an old NRA bumper sticker, I'll give up my locally installed apps when they pry my cold dead fingers from my keyboard.
D. Keith Higgs CWRU. Kelvin Smith Library
-- My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no)
by
AJWM
·
· Score: 5
Uh, Sun isn't interested in home PCs, so what makes sense on those is irrelevant to Sun. Sun sells to businesses, and there the model does make sense. (Not always, but enough of a market that Microsoft is nervous about it.) And that market is much bigger than the home PC market.
(In the future, perhaps, as broadband access to the net (cable, DSL, etc) increases, we may see more of an interest by Sun in the home market -- likely a lot of current non-PC owners would be interested in something like this that'll give them their email, their network-served office apps, and yes their networked games. WebTV just doesn't cut it. Remember that most potential home users have neither the inclination nor skill to manage a PC, they'd rather pay somebody else to do it - and if they can do that via a network, so much the better (no need to bring the PC down to CompUSA or wherever to have the latest software loaded up on it)).
Don't make the mistake of judging the mass market by your personal preferences. After all, look at the success of Microsoft and AOL.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it absolutely amazing that so few otherwise intelligent people completely fail to get the point of thin-client computing.
READ MY LIPS: THIS IS NOT FOR YOUR HOME PC!!!!
I am consulting at a company right now that has over 1000 UNIX boxes on people's desk. They also have about that many NT boxes. And they have a dozen people to keep them running probably making an average of $50K/yr.
What do I (and most of the other people with this equipment) use it for?
Netscape. Rlogin to a server where we do our development. Maybe Applix or StarOffice. And we don't have root access or access to anything but our NFS mounted home directories. Why not? We don't need it.
I don't need a full, independent workstation to do what I do here. I certainly don't need a $3000 Ultra 5. Thin clients are wonderful in this kind of environment.
The last place I worked (a large health-care organization) had literally hundreds, possibly thousands of users who used their PC's for two things: netscape to access the intranet (no Internet access for the masses) and Rumba to emulate an IBM 3270 terminal. We started to use Winterms because of the maintenance situation and they worked pretty well -- it looks to me like the Sun ray is an order of magnitude better than a winterm as well as being cheaper.
I see people whining about games on thin clients... HELLO!??!! How on earth is that relevant in the environment that these things are actually aimed at? It's not.
Finally, let me come back to the home PC. My wife uses a PC for three things: email, netscape, and quicken. That's it! No games, no office, no nothing. Why does she need a full PC running Linux or anything else?
The biggest problem with thin clients to date has been that they have not been cheaper, just easier to maintain. The Sun Ray looks to be changing that, and I wish them luck.
As for Star-Portal: Star Portal seems like a wonderful idea to me for occasional users of office applications (like me) -- Emacs is all the WP I need most of the time. When it's not, pull up one of the corporate licenses for star-portal. Don't forget that you don't have to install the software on every desktop as you do with conventional office apps like Star Office or MS-Office.
I guess the bottom line to this post is this: if you can only think of the home market and are reading slashdot, you don't need thin clients. But realize that most of the computers in the world are not aimed at the home market!!!
-- Slashdot sucks.
As for their plans to move applications to the net... That could never again be the main mode of operations in the computing world. That's exactly what we had before the Altair, Apple, IBM-PC... came along and confirmed the market for desktop computing. There are certain situations for which hosted software is a very good idea. Computers in public librarys and such come to mind. I don't want to go to the library to use a public terminal that some cyberpunk has rendered unuseable by filling the HD with their favorite games. I want to go to the library to use the research tools that were intended to be there.
Ultimately, Sun can go ahead with their plans to serve apps across the net. There is a relatively untapped market for that service. However, as I paraphrase an old NRA bumper sticker, I'll give up my locally installed apps when they pry my cold dead fingers from my keyboard.
D. Keith Higgs
CWRU. Kelvin Smith Library
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Uh, Sun isn't interested in home PCs, so what makes sense on those is irrelevant to Sun. Sun sells to businesses, and there the model does make sense. (Not always, but enough of a market that Microsoft is nervous about it.)
And that market is much bigger than the home PC market.
(In the future, perhaps, as broadband access to the net (cable, DSL, etc) increases, we may see more of an interest by Sun in the home market -- likely a lot of current non-PC owners would be interested in something like this that'll give them their email, their network-served office apps, and yes their networked games. WebTV just doesn't cut it. Remember that most potential home users have neither the inclination nor skill to manage a PC, they'd rather pay somebody else to do it - and if they can do that via a network, so much the better (no need to bring the PC down to CompUSA or wherever to have the latest software loaded up on it)).
Don't make the mistake of judging the mass market by your personal preferences. After all, look at the success of Microsoft and AOL.
-- Alastair