Perhaps I am not making my point in an effective way. While your 15
year old ASCII terminal does have the same management characteristics as
a Sun Ray, it no longer meets the standards of user interaction required
for today's apps. These standards of user interaction have increased in
leaps over the years... manual switches were replaced by punched cards,
which were replaced by ASCII terminals, which ultimately gave way to
graphical user interfaces. The reason your 15 year old ASCII terminal
is no longer useful is because there is at least one order of magnitude
productivity to be gained by using a GUI in its place.
My bet is that 15 years from now the standards of user interaction will
be fairly close to where we are today... graphical monitor, keyboard,
mouse, and other peripherals for printing, storing, scanning, etc. Of
course the current standard will be replaced eventually as well. The
keyboard will be replaced, probably for a voice-based system (remember
Scotty talking into the mouse on ST4?) The monitor and mouse will be
replaced... perhaps for the heads-up display envisioned in Minority
Report. Once this shift occurs, then perhaps the Sun Rays will become
obsolete too.
The key difference in the lifespan of a Sun Ray versus a PC or
pseudo-thin device from Wyse is that the Sun Ray will become obsolete
only as the standard of user interaction changes. The PC, on the other
hand, will become obsolete as the software changes (most notably the
O/S), which runs on a much more accelerated schedule.
-jerry
Blaster wrote:
And I have a 15 year old ASCII terminal downstairs...It too never needed
upgrading or patching, and it too still works just as it did the day I
bought it 15 years ago, but it really isn't all that useful by today's
standards. Even though I spend 99% of my day using ASCII windows, I find it
much more productive to have 30 of them open at once, with the ability to
cut and paste between them.
Saying the Sun Ray 1 will still be running the current office apps in 15
years is stretching it a bit.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:sunray-users-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jerry Callison
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 1:51 PM
To: SunRay-Users mailing list
Subject: Re: [SunRay-Users] Why SunRay?
I'm sorry... but comparing SRSS firmware updates to the kind of
patching, repatching, and service packing that takes place on a PC or
Wyse is not fair advertising either. How much testing, tracking and
deployment planning is required for a firmware update? For me, it's
about 99.9% less than what I do for each and every O/S hotfix. And they
are a lot less frequent, too.
Furthermore, comparing SRSS firmware updates to the Windows refresh
cycle is not fair either. A Sun Ray I buy today will run future office
productivity applications just as well 10-15 years from now as it does
today. I may not be able to run not-yet-invented gadgets on the
not-yet-invented protocol that is better than USB... but I will be able
to upgrade the software and have it run just as well then as it does
today. A Windows PC, on the other hand, does not support this kind of
longevity. New software requires the newer O/S... the new O/S requires
the newer hardware (for more information, google "Windows Vista hardware
requirements"). The drivers that force hardware upgrades on a PC are
all external to the customer. Conversely, the drivers that force
upgrades on a Sun Ray are all internal -- and therefore elective rather
than compulsory.
-jerry
Blaster wrote:
So the bottom line is that software development is forcing client
upgrades on thin clients and ultimately forcing hardware upgrades.
Not so with Sunrays. Sunrays don't run software and OS so you are never
forced to upgrade them.
This is really false advertising when Sun and others claim this.
Remember,
Bill Gates said no one will ever need more than 640K of memory either.
Sun Rays do have firmware that must be upgraded every time you patch the
SRSS software. The fact that this happens mostly seamlessly sort of
hides
this, but it is there.
At some point, the first generation of Sun Rays will become obsolete as
technology advances and pushes them past their design limits. At that
point, Sun will stop supporting them and they will become doorstops like
everything else technology eventually becomes.
The biggest draw back I see to the Sun Rays is their apparent inability
to
do full screen full motion video. That alone puts a pretty big limit on
their capabilities and will forever keep them in the "dull office
machine"
market.
I would also like to know why these things still sell for $249 list.
When
you can open up the Sunday paper and get a Dell PC with a 2.5Ghz
processor,
256MB RAM, DVD drive and a monitor for $229. The Dell has about 10 times
the amount of physical materials and complexity as the Sun Ray. These
things should be selling for no more than your average cable modem.
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