Ken Mandelberg wrote: > I don't want to get involved in the broader issues in > Martin's post but this caught my eye: > > > > If you find a manager who is willing (economically > > *able*) to finance all that, then we would > probably > > be in paradise. > > But all that doesn't make sense, as Sun wouldn't > earn > > a single Cent on that. > > We have a student computer lab full of > SB2500/XVR600s. This was a very standard > configuration. The USIII cpu's in these workstations > are not substantially behind the current Sparc > workstation offerings. > > When we buy from Sun we don't generally know what > Sun's business relationships are with their > suppliers. We assume we are paying a premium price > for support of Sun hardware, and that they have > chosen wisely both technically in hardware and their > ability to support it going forward. > > Work done supporting Sun badged hardware might not > directly earn a single cent, but it does contribute > to customer loyalty and future purchasing decisions.
Well, I fully agree with you! I myself had been expecting the same when I spent EUR 2500,- for a low-configured SunBlade 150 (hundred fifty, therefore in fact a SB100 with 550 IIe aka "IIi") in January of 2003. Or when I spent much more for my Tadpole 500SX eleven months later. I'm also confident that Sun's X11 group (the remainder of it) will agree with you. But you and I did get what we had been paying for (Solaris8 and Xsun), actually way more than that (Solaris10!!!). So what do you want? I think Xsun's performance is good enough, and if you need state of the art gfx performance and Xorg's advanced extensions, then you can get a Ultra20 or Ultra24 high performance AMD or Intel branded x64 box for less than $1000,- You can even apply for a 60day-trial. Especially if you are located in the U.S. and then even representing a bigger institution (e.g. University). I think everyone here will be on your side. But management had (and still has) to cut costs. That's the insane way how today's economy evolves. It is definitely short-sighted. But Sun doesn't have much influence in getting that mess changed. And if they don't go with the industry, then they will die. See NYSE. I mean you *did* get, what you had paid for. Actually more than that. True premium services (or how else would you describe what Sun does?!). But a single commercial entity cannot compete with millions of worldwide lemmings burning their time ... This message posted from opensolaris.org
