Like you said, the application was not clustered, did you not make it clear to your client that they are not protected in that situation and they should accept the risk or else cough up some money.
Yes I did. There was a complete plan, the money was there as well, but because managment wanted to look good (read: Not spend money and come in "under budget") they never signed off.
In case your application ever gets clustered, you could perhaps lower the cost of the contract by taking something less critical like 'same day' repear instead of '2 hours' or something.
It is clustered now and the contract was (when I left) still the same. Why? Because Murphy, they want / need to get the cluster back in a sane state as quickly as possible, the DB is at the core of the business (call center, Web Interface, IVR) if they don't have it, they can't do business.
secondly, I have been dealing with sun support and it is nothing special compared to IBM or HP. I don't think it is 100% worth the money. although you almost have no other choice then to pay, going without support is impossible for serious businesses.
I've dealt with HP and SUN, not with IBM though.
What I can say about HP is that the company in itself is a little bit suspect. The last shop I worked for bought a VA7400 besides the XP512. The VA never really worked. Before I left it decided to croak pretty serisouly, the recommendation from HP?
"Well, the VA ain't supported anymore as it is EOL (now that we bought Compaq and they are better with medium sized Storage than we are). We can cut you a deal on it though!".
Yeah, great service, really.
Don't get me started on the XP512, it's basically a Hitchachi array with HP Logo and Firmware. It is beyond me why anybody would buy this (politics of course) as the only place you can get support from is HP. If you buy the Sun Array though (also Hitachi) it is Hitachi through and through and at least you can get support from several different vendors.
So no, my experience with HP support isn't all that glorious.
perhaps these things just don't happen in europe? i never saw a sun engineer that had to fly over some part from i don't know where. these guys get stuck in trafic jams and sometimes screw up the outage window.
Last time I checked Toronto was in Canada, not in Europe. You know, the thing on top of the USA?
Ja, und ich glaub das heisst auch "Spelling Nazi" aber Englisch leider nur meine zweite Fremdsprache, von dahher kann es gut sein das ich damit falsch liege.
However, just as many large companies are doing what they can to move away from reliance on mainframes,
This is not what I am observing, I am still aware of quite a few companies who are even pulling back into mainframe when they realized that their midrange (e.g. high end Unix) systems couldn't do what they were supposed to do.
My architectural philosophy always was and is to use the right tool for the job. No need to use a hammer to get in a screw.
[Linux] it has evolved over the years from a mere "hobby" OS into a system capable of handling quite a variety of tasks.
Yes it has, but the short comings are also in the hardware and as Linux is not controlling the Server Hardware market it will always be a problem.
Granted, because of the OSS/GPL nature of Linux it is highly adaptable, but let's be serious, what company would want to spent the research time into developing hardware and then the software that works well with the hardware only to give the software (and thus most likely a lot of information about their hardware) away? This is one of the reaons why for example MacOS X works so great with Apple Hardware while Yellow Dog is not "quite there yet" and most likely never will be.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of OSS/GPL, in fact I love it (must be the communist in me) but I just don't see this happen. (I am posting this from RedHat 9 btw).
Sun's philosophy seems to be that Linux isn't in their league, and it never will be. This sort of head in the sand mentality ignores the gains Linux has made over the last few years, and ignores its substantial momentum in the enterprise.
Yes and no. See my above point. I think Sun is right to some extend, of course Google is proving right now that with the right setup the individual hardware doesn't matter anymore, but I just don't think things like this are feasable for most companies.
Things change, sometimes pretty rapidly.
True, but yet, the more they change, the more they stay the same.
Linux (as a whole, that means Software, Administrator and Advocats) still need to mature more, it'll be a while. Right now I have a hard time hiring a pure Linux Administrator, I have seen to many who seem to have the same kind of tunnel vision that you say Sun has right now.
Yes, on dual Xeons running RedHat. Works great, the only problems we've had have been physical drive failures.
Now I am curious.
What DB are you using? And more interresting how is it used? If you just have static Data I can see this be done, but I am wondering how "transient" the data in the DB is?
Interesting comment. First, you are missing the point of my original comment. Regardless of whether you think Linux is as good as Solaris, the fact of the matter is that Linux's marketshare is growing rapidly, while Sun's is shrinking.
And where is Linux taking the market Share from? Windows? Solaris? HP-UX? AIX?
Just because more Linux is bought (or installed) Is a bit misleading. If I only need one Sun (HP, IBM) Server but several dozen Linux Server than of course the numbers are higher.
Second, Linux is permeating the enterprise market in ways that you apparently don't see.
What I do see is a reluctance by many companies to put mission critical applications even remotly on Linux. The company I am working for right now has not one Linux System in Production, what they do have though is Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and even some True-64. Linux is currently "evaluated" and it isn't much different, as far as I can tell, in any other big shop.
But of course we're probably "old school" heck, we still use Mainframes.
It reminds me of the situation in the late 1990s, when everyone was running their dot-com web apps on Solaris, with Sun hardware. "This is mission-critical. There's no way we'd run it on Linux."
Last time I check the website of our company someone had decided to run it on Windows, why is way beyond me, but that people decided to run their website on Solaris I never quite got. When I was working for an ISP I wouldn't have mind hosting most of the client on Linux, but guess what, boss didn't like it, so we went with Sparc clones which still did a lot better than the Windows stuff.
Now you don't hear that about web apps. The Sun worshippers now declare that while it's OK to use Linux for web apps, it's not suitable for things outside of Web application development.
First of all I didn't say that. But even you have to admit that there is no way that you would want to run a multi TeraByte DB on a Linux Server? The reality is Sun was choosing by a lot of Startups because it had a good name and because it was something that all the big companies where runnig as well. It seems you are thinking that Sun wasn't around until the Web became "of age", but that's not the case.
I wonder how it will take before the comments shift to something like this: "Linux is OK for web apps and clustering and data warehousing and and as an embedded OS, but it's not nearly as capable as Solaris for...."
I invite you to start working at a big company for a change, you know, the kind of company that is in the business for 30+ years, has mainframes, large customer base and in general requires their system to work and be available. Once you work there, I dare you to propose to migrate one of the large and mission critical production DBs over to Linux. Let me know how it goes, if you can do this I am sure a lot of people want to hear this. Probably would even make an excellent Slashdot story.
Our admins hate Solaris. It's a friggin pain in the butt, with no better performance/reliability than BSD. The only thing Oracle and Sun do for us, is take away the responsibility of having to figure out what to do with hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
I am just guessing here, but I would guess that the reason for your stability problems is that you "hate " Solaris.
Solaris is an excellent OS (so is HP-UX) if administrated correctly. Sure it has it's quirks, but they did a damn fine job with it.
Linux plays a role in the server market whether you want to "believe" in it or not.
Sorry to break it to you but it does not play in the same league as Solaris or HP-UX, and it won't for quite some time.
He might be navel gazing and infuriate the slashdot crowd who see Linux everywhere, but the reality is that once you get out of WebServing and MySQL you pretty quickly loose interrest in Linux. It just isn't there yet (and in part that is because of the HW (x86) it mainly runs on.
But when it's a mission critical website, that needs to run... it's Solaris.
Of course there are businesses who use their Servers for something else than hosting a website....
I find the Linux comments always funny when it comes to Linux vs. Sun, it seems all people do here is run Websites, does anybody here actually handle a couple of TB worth of Databases?
I have and I can tell you they are worth every penny.
When our main DB Server died a couple of very very horrible deaths Sun flew one of their engineers in from the States and they took the thing apart, spare parts where there within the hour (try that in Toronto Rush hour traffic) and General the moment I opened a call I had someone on site without as much as a flinch.
Was it "expensive"? Not if you consider the amount of money the company was loosing while the server was down (and yes, it should have been clustered, but they didn't see a need for it until it went away, now it's on a 6800 and clustered).
Well here is a novel idea: Try to find a consesus instead of playing sherriff and shooting around you wildly.
Just an idea but you know what? It might just work.
The problem is though that the US (Administration) seems to think that they can do whatever they want.
Is China a threat to the US? Hardly. Chine UNLIKE the US has not fought any big war in the last couple of decades, they have no real interrest (or so it seems) in world domination and seem to be a lot more rational lately then the ones at 1600.
I highly doubt that will ever come about as long as NATO exists.
There was a "still" missing in there. I am not so sure that NATO still works the way the US would like it. There are voices in Europe that ask the question: "Why do we need NATO?" And during the last Golf War NATO was already toothless (remember that the US wanted NATO Air defense System in Turkey and all the NATO member nations said no?).
Now, it's time for the world to make a serious decision. If we're going to keep putting our chips in with the United Nations, maybe it's time for the United Nations to step in and start acting against these fascist governments, and demand some real reforms. That's what the UN is for, for governments to get together, come up with some common laws, and rule when some nations are in contempt of those laws. And we find the same nations are violating their citizens rights over and over, and the UN does nothing. Then we have nations crying "Why won't the USA step in?" See Monrovia, Liberia... But the US doesn't want to be "the policeman of the world", yet we seem to be drug into that role over and over.
Noble noble noble, until you start looking in the way for example the USA is acting in their own self interrest.
The problem with the UN is that it doesn't have any real power. It is not much more than an assembly hall, and the biggest bully of the all decides to ignore them at will. That's the problem. The only way the UN could work is if it had a military power of it's own. Troops that are not under the command of any specific country but at the disposal of the UN itself. That doesn't happen though and it won't happen. Where would you base them? Where would you get them from? How could you make certain that the troops would be loyal to the UN?
The (current) US Administration doens't care about the UN unless it gives the US some benefit, most countries don't want to put up with this anymore as can now be seen in Iraq.
Yea, there are "American" transnational corps all over the world, but that doesn't make the USA "culturally influential", that makes you "economically influential"... however, because there is such a lack of Culture in North America (minus Mexico... mostly Canada and USA), the line between "culture" and "the mall" is extremely blurred. I just got back from Hungary and Croatia, and the only "culture" you've "influenced" on them is "Burger King" and "McDonald's"... which goes back to my point... it's not culture, it's business. Big difference.
I agree, though when it comes to "culture" I think Canada has one up on the US. There are tons of musicians here and it seems that "fine arts" so to speak are a bit more appreciated here than they are south of the border (speaking as a european), though yes, when it comes to cultural history neither of the countries would win anything.
Who is (for better or worse) the most culturally influential power in the world today?
That'll be the US in regards of "mass marketing" "culture" but that doesn't make it the most influencial.
Who is the dominant military power in the world today?
Individually speaking? The US, though Russia has a seizable army too, and lo and behold, nukes.
Who is the dominant economic power in the world today?
Interresting question, how do you want to calculate that? GDP?
Who is the dominant political power in the world today? Hint: if you answered the same for military and economic it must be that power here.
I didn't and no that doesn't mean squat. Define "Most dominant policital power"? I know you aim for the US in this, but ask yourself this: What does dominance have to do with democracy?
Is this is like the Company I dealt with once who claimed to have remotely updated my server despite the fact that it was down at the time they claimed to have done the update?
The problem is that in North America the idea seems to stick that "The longer someone works, the more productive they are", if you look a bit closer at stats you'll realize though that this is not necessarily true.
I grew up in Europe (Germany) and I have worked in several companies and can tell you the one thing I noticed is different to when I came to the US is that people are working when they are there, not just being there. In NA though it seems to be that most people are "just there" without doing much and the overall turn around is a lot slower than it ever was when I was in Europe (I worked in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland).
So overall this is a nice theory and by my own observations completly wrong (heck, at work in DE I wouldn't have had a chance to post on Slashdot during work hours).
I have driven extensivly in North America and quite frankly I can't really see why I would need something more than a Lupo or Smart to get around necessarily?
Cities I have been to include NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto and in any of theses cities either of these cars would do.
Looking at places like LA those cars would do fine there too and as for cross country drives: They have more than enough horsepower to drive at 55mph (or let's be realistic in the Bay area nobody goes slower than 80) but they can easily do this.
But if you want "higher-end" how about the A class from Mercedes? If you can go on the Autobahn with them you can surely survive the US Freeway System, no?
Smart is owned by Mercedes-Benz which in turn is owned by Daimler-Chrysler. The cars are built (mostly AFAIK) in Boeblingen, just outside of Stuttgart (hence, that's why the cars all have the BB license plate).
Slashdot Mirror
I just checked their Website, the prices seem to be higher though?
What kind of deal did you get?
M.
One word: Internet Radio.
Let's assume right now I am listening to it 8 hours a day, 8 days a week (at 128KBit/s), that means I am "downloading" roughly 13.1GB a month.
Now add some ISO's and other stuff and let's say I am at around 15GB a month.
Of course, that's not 90GB, but still, more than the 5GB the "unlimited" one is giving you, no?
Like you said, the application was not clustered, did you not make it clear to your client that they are not protected in that situation and they should accept the risk or else cough up some money.
Yes I did. There was a complete plan, the money was there as well, but because managment wanted to look good (read: Not spend money and come in "under budget") they never signed off.
In case your application ever gets clustered, you could perhaps lower the cost of the contract by taking something less critical like 'same day' repear instead of '2 hours' or something.
It is clustered now and the contract was (when I left) still the same. Why? Because Murphy, they want / need to get the cluster back in a sane state as quickly as possible, the DB is at the core of the business (call center, Web Interface, IVR) if they don't have it, they can't do business.
secondly, I have been dealing with sun support and it is nothing special compared to IBM or HP. I don't think it is 100% worth the money. although you almost have no other choice then to pay, going without support is impossible for serious businesses.
I've dealt with HP and SUN, not with IBM though.
What I can say about HP is that the company in itself is a little bit suspect. The last shop I worked for bought a VA7400 besides the XP512. The VA never really worked. Before I left it decided to croak pretty serisouly, the recommendation from HP?
"Well, the VA ain't supported anymore as it is EOL (now that we bought Compaq and they are better with medium sized Storage than we are). We can cut you a deal on it though!".
Yeah, great service, really.
Don't get me started on the XP512, it's basically a Hitchachi array with HP Logo and Firmware. It is beyond me why anybody would buy this (politics of course) as the only place you can get support from is HP. If you buy the Sun Array though (also Hitachi) it is Hitachi through and through and at least you can get support from several different vendors.
So no, my experience with HP support isn't all that glorious.
perhaps these things just don't happen in europe? i never saw a sun engineer that had to fly over some part from i don't know where. these guys get stuck in trafic jams and sometimes screw up the outage window.
Last time I checked Toronto was in Canada, not in Europe. You know, the thing on top of the USA?
Ja, und ich glaub das heisst auch "Spelling Nazi" aber Englisch leider nur meine zweite Fremdsprache, von dahher kann es gut sein das ich damit falsch liege.
Ich gelobe Besserung.
However, just as many large companies are doing what they can to move away from reliance on mainframes,
This is not what I am observing, I am still aware of quite a few companies who are even pulling back into mainframe when they realized that their midrange (e.g. high end Unix) systems couldn't do what they were supposed to do.
My architectural philosophy always was and is to use the right tool for the job. No need to use a hammer to get in a screw.
[Linux] it has evolved over the years from a mere "hobby" OS into a system capable of handling quite a variety of tasks.
Yes it has, but the short comings are also in the hardware and as Linux is not controlling the Server Hardware market it will always be a problem.
Granted, because of the OSS/GPL nature of Linux it is highly adaptable, but let's be serious, what company would want to spent the research time into developing hardware and then the software that works well with the hardware only to give the software (and thus most likely a lot of information about their hardware) away? This is one of the reaons why for example MacOS X works so great with Apple Hardware while Yellow Dog is not "quite there yet" and most likely never will be.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of OSS/GPL, in fact I love it (must be the communist in me) but I just don't see this happen. (I am posting this from RedHat 9 btw).
Sun's philosophy seems to be that Linux isn't in their league, and it never will be. This sort of head in the sand mentality ignores the gains Linux has made over the last few years, and ignores its substantial momentum in the enterprise.
Yes and no. See my above point. I think Sun is right to some extend, of course Google is proving right now that with the right setup the individual hardware doesn't matter anymore, but I just don't think things like this are feasable for most companies.
Things change, sometimes pretty rapidly.
True, but yet, the more they change, the more they stay the same.
Linux (as a whole, that means Software, Administrator and Advocats) still need to mature more, it'll be a while. Right now I have a hard time hiring a pure Linux Administrator, I have seen to many who seem to have the same kind of tunnel vision that you say Sun has right now.
It's a shame really.
Yes, on dual Xeons running RedHat. Works great, the only problems we've had have been physical drive failures.
Now I am curious.
What DB are you using? And more interresting how is it used? If you just have static Data I can see this be done, but I am wondering how "transient" the data in the DB is?
Interesting comment. First, you are missing the point of my original comment. Regardless of whether you think Linux is as good as Solaris, the fact of the matter is that Linux's marketshare is growing rapidly, while Sun's is shrinking.
... ."
And where is Linux taking the market Share from? Windows? Solaris? HP-UX? AIX?
Just because more Linux is bought (or installed) Is a bit misleading. If I only need one Sun (HP, IBM) Server but several dozen Linux Server than of course the numbers are higher.
Second, Linux is permeating the enterprise market in ways that you apparently don't see.
What I do see is a reluctance by many companies to put mission critical applications even remotly on Linux. The company I am working for right now has not one Linux System in Production, what they do have though is Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX and even some True-64. Linux is currently "evaluated" and it isn't much different, as far as I can tell, in any other big shop.
But of course we're probably "old school" heck, we still use Mainframes.
It reminds me of the situation in the late 1990s, when everyone was running their dot-com web apps on Solaris, with Sun hardware. "This is mission-critical. There's no way we'd run it on Linux."
Last time I check the website of our company someone had decided to run it on Windows, why is way beyond me, but that people decided to run their website on Solaris I never quite got. When I was working for an ISP I wouldn't have mind hosting most of the client on Linux, but guess what, boss didn't like it, so we went with Sparc clones which still did a lot better than the Windows stuff.
Now you don't hear that about web apps. The Sun worshippers now declare that while it's OK to use Linux for web apps, it's not suitable for things outside of Web application development.
First of all I didn't say that. But even you have to admit that there is no way that you would want to run a multi TeraByte DB on a Linux Server? The reality is Sun was choosing by a lot of Startups because it had a good name and because it was something that all the big companies where runnig as well. It seems you are thinking that Sun wasn't around until the Web became "of age", but that's not the case.
I wonder how it will take before the comments shift to something like this: "Linux is OK for web apps and clustering and data warehousing and and as an embedded OS, but it's not nearly as capable as Solaris for
I invite you to start working at a big company for a change, you know, the kind of company that is in the business for 30+ years, has mainframes, large customer base and in general requires their system to work and be available. Once you work there, I dare you to propose to migrate one of the large and mission critical production DBs over to Linux. Let me know how it goes, if you can do this I am sure a lot of people want to hear this. Probably would even make an excellent Slashdot story.
Our admins hate Solaris. It's a friggin pain in the butt, with no better performance/reliability than BSD. The only thing Oracle and Sun do for us, is take away the responsibility of having to figure out what to do with hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
I am just guessing here, but I would guess that the reason for your stability problems is that you "hate " Solaris.
Solaris is an excellent OS (so is HP-UX) if administrated correctly. Sure it has it's quirks, but they did a damn fine job with it.
Linux plays a role in the server market whether you want to "believe" in it or not.
Sorry to break it to you but it does not play in the same league as Solaris or HP-UX, and it won't for quite some time.
He might be navel gazing and infuriate the slashdot crowd who see Linux everywhere, but the reality is that once you get out of WebServing and MySQL you pretty quickly loose interrest in Linux. It just isn't there yet (and in part that is because of the HW (x86) it mainly runs on.
But when it's a mission critical website, that needs to run... it's Solaris.
Of course there are businesses who use their Servers for something else than hosting a website....
I find the Linux comments always funny when it comes to Linux vs. Sun, it seems all people do here is run Websites, does anybody here actually handle a couple of TB worth of Databases?
Did you ever had to deal with Sun Support?
I have and I can tell you they are worth every penny.
When our main DB Server died a couple of very very horrible deaths Sun flew one of their engineers in from the States and they took the thing apart, spare parts where there within the hour (try that in Toronto Rush hour traffic) and General the moment I opened a call I had someone on site without as much as a flinch.
Was it "expensive"? Not if you consider the amount of money the company was loosing while the server was down (and yes, it should have been clustered, but they didn't see a need for it until it went away, now it's on a 6800 and clustered).
M.
Lawyers - your poison for information society
This reminds me of one of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes (last year?).
Where Lisa walks out of the house in the beginning (with Bart being a Vampire and such) and she holds a book in her hands titled "Copyright Law".
Simpsons might not be "as good" as they were once, but they can still pack a punch at times (of couse I am sure 99% of the audience didn't "get it".
There is a scripting language available in Star Office.
Sun even has a document on it.
Well here is a novel idea: Try to find a consesus instead of playing sherriff and shooting around you wildly.
Just an idea but you know what? It might just work.
The problem is though that the US (Administration) seems to think that they can do whatever they want.
Is China a threat to the US? Hardly. Chine UNLIKE the US has not fought any big war in the last couple of decades, they have no real interrest (or so it seems) in world domination and seem to be a lot more rational lately then the ones at 1600.
But then maybe it's just me.
or the safety of our people.
Ahh, the "US vs. them" attitude.
The US Government doesn't listen to anyone in the world, no wonder you have coffee cups with "Warning, contents is hot".
I highly doubt that will ever come about as long as NATO exists.
There was a "still" missing in there. I am not so sure that NATO still works the way the US would like it. There are voices in Europe that ask the question: "Why do we need NATO?" And during the last Golf War NATO was already toothless (remember that the US wanted NATO Air defense System in Turkey and all the NATO member nations said no?).
Now, it's time for the world to make a serious decision. If we're going to keep putting our chips in with the United Nations, maybe it's time for the United Nations to step in and start acting against these fascist governments, and demand some real reforms. That's what the UN is for, for governments to get together, come up with some common laws, and rule when some nations are in contempt of those laws. And we find the same nations are violating their citizens rights over and over, and the UN does nothing. Then we have nations crying "Why won't the USA step in?" See Monrovia, Liberia... But the US doesn't want to be "the policeman of the world", yet we seem to be drug into that role over and over.
Noble noble noble, until you start looking in the way for example the USA is acting in their own self interrest.
The problem with the UN is that it doesn't have any real power. It is not much more than an assembly hall, and the biggest bully of the all decides to ignore them at will. That's the problem. The only way the UN could work is if it had a military power of it's own. Troops that are not under the command of any specific country but at the disposal of the UN itself. That doesn't happen though and it won't happen. Where would you base them? Where would you get them from? How could you make certain that the troops would be loyal to the UN?
The (current) US Administration doens't care about the UN unless it gives the US some benefit, most countries don't want to put up with this anymore as can now be seen in Iraq.
Yea, there are "American" transnational corps all over the world, but that doesn't make the USA "culturally influential", that makes you "economically influential"... however, because there is such a lack of Culture in North America (minus Mexico... mostly Canada and USA), the line between "culture" and "the mall" is extremely blurred. I just got back from Hungary and Croatia, and the only "culture" you've "influenced" on them is "Burger King" and "McDonald's"... which goes back to my point... it's not culture, it's business. Big difference.
I agree, though when it comes to "culture" I think Canada has one up on the US. There are tons of musicians here and it seems that "fine arts" so to speak are a bit more appreciated here than they are south of the border (speaking as a european), though yes, when it comes to cultural history neither of the countries would win anything.
Who is (for better or worse) the most culturally influential power in the world today?
That'll be the US in regards of "mass marketing" "culture" but that doesn't make it the most influencial.
Who is the dominant military power in the world today?
Individually speaking? The US, though Russia has a seizable army too, and lo and behold, nukes.
Who is the dominant economic power in the world today?
Interresting question, how do you want to calculate that? GDP?
Who is the dominant political power in the world today? Hint: if you answered the same for military and economic it must be that power here.
I didn't and no that doesn't mean squat. Define "Most dominant policital power"? I know you aim for the US in this, but ask yourself this: What does dominance have to do with democracy?
... if I don't have anything plugged in?
Is this is like the Company I dealt with once who claimed to have remotely updated my server despite the fact that it was down at the time they claimed to have done the update?
The problem is that in North America the idea seems to stick that "The longer someone works, the more productive they are", if you look a bit closer at stats you'll realize though that this is not necessarily true.
I grew up in Europe (Germany) and I have worked in several companies and can tell you the one thing I noticed is different to when I came to the US is that people are working when they are there, not just being there. In NA though it seems to be that most people are "just there" without doing much and the overall turn around is a lot slower than it ever was when I was in Europe (I worked in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland).
So overall this is a nice theory and by my own observations completly wrong (heck, at work in DE I wouldn't have had a chance to post on Slashdot during work hours).
M.
I have driven extensivly in North America and quite frankly I can't really see why I would need something more than a Lupo or Smart to get around necessarily?
Cities I have been to include NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto and in any of theses cities either of these cars would do.
Looking at places like LA those cars would do fine there too and as for cross country drives: They have more than enough horsepower to drive at 55mph (or let's be realistic in the Bay area nobody goes slower than 80) but they can easily do this.
But if you want "higher-end" how about the A class from Mercedes? If you can go on the Autobahn with them you can surely survive the US Freeway System, no?
Ahhh, well now then.
:)
But still, amazing how far one can get on a bike with a little bit of practice
M.
Oh please.
I am German, I do know the "value" of Horsepowers and quite frankly most cars in Europe are just as comfortable if not more so than the one in the US.
You are aware that the Smart is a German car?
Smart is owned by Mercedes-Benz which in turn is owned by Daimler-Chrysler. The cars are built (mostly AFAIK) in Boeblingen, just outside of Stuttgart (hence, that's why the cars all have the BB license plate).